AOL Acquires Social Feed Aggregator

David Liu of AOL and GM of People NetworksAOL confirmed on Friday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire social feed aggregation platform Socialthing.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but a source close to the purchase put the price in the seven figures. Industry blog TechCrunch first reported the deal on August 1.

The Socialthing team--led by founders Matt Galligan and Ben Brightwell--will report to David Liu, SVP and general manager of AOL's People Networks division, which will absorb the startup.

"The importance of social media aggregation technology is rapidly accelerating as our personal networks grow and provide us with an increasing amount of information about our friends and contacts from a myriad of different sites," said Liu.

AOL's People Networks division, which is comprised of its social platforms, is led by Joanna Shields, EVP of AOL and president of Bebo.

This acquisition is part of a larger strategy and product plan on the part of AOL to provide consumers with a new social discovery experience built on social networking, according to Lui.

"As AOL continues to grow the reach of our People Networks business, the power of Socialthing's technology will provide the users of our social network offerings, including AIM, ICQ and Bebo, with the most relevant way to stay updated with friends across multiple communities."

Similar to Friendfeed or Facebook's News feeds, AOL recently launched AIM BuddyUpdates, which lets AIM users keep up with their friends' activities through instant-messaging.

Launched only five months ago in private beta, the privately held Boulder, CO-based Socialthing has developed a social feed aggregation platform that provides users with a consolidated view of the activities their friends engage in across multiple social media properties.

Socialthing's platform is integrated with 13 social media properties including Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Flickr, and is currently in private beta.

AOL now plans to integrate Socialthing's lifestreaming into a number of AOL's community properties, including its social network Bebo and instant messager service AIM.

Next story loading loading..