We’ve received confirmation from AOL that the company has acquired Socialthing!, a lifestreaming service that competes with FriendFeed. We originally reported the deal on August 1.
AOL says that the Socialthing! team will report to SVP of AOL and GM of People Networks David Liu, and will be incorporated into its People Networks division. Socialthing’s lifestreaming will be integrated into a number of AOL’s community properties, including its social network Bebo and AIM, its popular chat service.
The acquisition comes during a tough time for AOL, which has recently been forced to institute a number of budget cuts. Despite its setbacks, AOL is still keen on keeping its valuable social properties healthy, and likely saw Socialthing! as a relatively cheap investment (the aquistion price was not released, but it was probably fairly small).
Socialthing launched only five months ago in private beta. Unlike most social news aggregators, the site employs a smart algorithm that can figure out who you’re friends with, so you don’t have to explicitly define a friends list for each service.
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Thanks for the information mate.
Good for SocialThing, but when will the desperate AOL stop making mistakes after mistakes?
Why do you think it is a mistake? I actually prefer to view it as AOL building a stronger online presence, following the trends and actually delivering what people really want now.
AOL is a copycat! Digg (Netscape.com/Propeller), Twitter (BuddyUpdate), now FriendFeed (SocialThing) - they think that stamping their brand on a loser/copycat will get them a winner. Or putting a link to it on AOL.com.
I thought AOL wouldn’t be coming around in the news anytime soon, Let’s see how this takeover holds up.
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
Good move by AOL. socialthing is really a nice execution of a social streaming service. I wish them well.
bloggers, fired, coders, hired.
Congrats to the team!
Sounds like a lucky break for FriendFeed.
Congrats to my local Boulder entrepreneurs!
When are you guys going to add a report this post feature? ‘Techdude’ keeps posting the most useless, clearly spam comments so he can link to his completely spastic blog on every post. Its f**king annoying.
Is anybody here part of the private beta and can shed some light on just how smart the friend finder algorithm is? Thanks!
(linkback) Smart or Dumb? AOL buys Socialthing [VOTE] - http://www.thriveorfail.com/e53db
What’s the price?
In acquiring SocialThing, AOL secured tremendous value for our stakeholders by negotiating an all cash deal for a mere $2 trillion dollars. By paying an amount that is half the total of the US trade deficit with China, we feel confident that people will stop snickering about the $850 million we wasted on Bebo.
AOL is an idiot and does not knows how much it might cost them this socialthing.
This might indicate that Google is a bit late for acquiring FriendFeed which was designed to be acquired by Google.
@Nikolay Kolev
AOL has been, and always will be, media for the masses - not early adopters. The internet existed long before AOL but AOL brought access to ‘regular’ people. the acquisition of socialthing is an indicator that social media aggregation is moving into the main stream.
propeller is #3 in that market - how do you feel about reddit and mixx should they go away too? I guess you think competition is a bad thing - own much walmart stock?
@T3chlusive
the bloggers thing is a baseless, untrue blurb. AOL pays it’s bloggers well and is keeping them… but thanks for being an echo chamber on yet another false statement on aol. lemme guess, google is your darling love child… that is until they exist in the public eye for over 10 years. picasa?
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aol has definitely made bad decisions - name one publicly traded company that hasn’t, but they are one of only a handful of companies that lived thru the bubble burst or even more than 5 years
The link for AIM (and Bebo) is broken in the article.
….On its HTML level.