• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, November 9, 2006

AOL has purchased The Relegence Corporation, a New York-based company that offers Web users financial news feeds gleaned from more than 20,000 sources including Bloomberg TV, SEC filings and niche newsletters. Purchase terms were not disclosed.

AOL intends to integrate Relegence into its own service within the next six months, said AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham. "There are clear applications for the Relegence technology on the AOL service," Graham said, adding that the service should appeal to a number of different niche AOL communities.

Relegance monitors, indexes and then filters tens of thousands of content streams, Graham said, which are then aggregated from the Web and delivered to a user's desktop in Internet time. "They have a technology that--through customization and personalization--can make sure users get the information at the right time and place."

AOL has only just started the integration process, but Graham said it's possible that the company will use the Relegence technology to deliver content across a range of platforms, such as its instant messaging service.

Relegence, with 60 employees and offices in New York, London and Tel Aviv, currently operates a subscription service for financial clients. Graham said that Relegence would continue to run that venture separately.

The acquisition is at least the fifth for AOL this year. In August, AOL purchased ad-supported chat and instant messaging service Userplane and video game news and review site GameDaily; in May, the company acquired video ad network and technology company Lightningcast; and in January, it bought video search engine Truveo.