Around the Net
Is AOL After Widget Maker KickApps?
- BoomTown/ D: All Things Digital, Friday, March 14, 2008 11 AM
All eyes are on AOL these days. The Time Warner company is supposedly on the block, which made yesterday's $850 million acquisition of Bebo seem all the stranger, but AOL is also after widget
maker KickApps, for a reported price of $90 million. KickApps makes "white-label" widgets for companies and helps monetize them. The Web software maker has raised $17 million in two rounds of venture
capital financing, the most recent being August 2007.
TechCrunch (link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/14/aol-on-a-bender-kickapps-may-be-next-acquisition/) asks the pertinent
question: Does KickApps fit within AOL's overall widget/socialnetwork/advertising strategy? After paying $850 million for Bebo, AOL is clearly embracing social networks. KickApps would enhance the
advertising services AOL could provide for its new social network as well as for others; it would also give them an instant sales force in admittedly new field.
That said, "I don't think AOL has fully verbalized their go forward strategy yet," says TechCrunch writer Michael Arrington. "They may not even understand it internally."
