AOL Acquires SocialThing

I got a message late last night from Frank Gruber, product manager of MyAOL, pointing me to his post where he announced the acquisition.  AOL has been in the news a bit lately, most notably for cutting back some programs that were no longer part of the vision and not contributing to the bottom line.

Apparently there has been a lot of thinking going on over at AOL as to the direction the team wanted to take

After spending the better part of the first quarter of 2008 contributing to an ideation process around our current products, it quickly became clear that lifestreaming would be an essential part of any social product experience. Facebook, Bebo and MySpace have all placed a lifestream front and center to help users stay on top of all their social news. As the ideation process concluded AOL acquired Bebo for a large sum of money and some of our thinking was put on hold for a bit, but not put to waste. I am constantly looking at new products and when I saw the user experience, mobile version and social feed functionality of SocialThing I thought it might make sense to bring them into AOL as part of our lifestreaming efforts. So I introduced them to AOL executives as soon as I could.

It is nice to see the company taking a look at integrated efforts for their properties and not simply having a yard full of toys and not knowing what to do with them.  Yahoo has become famous for this by rounding up the likes of Flikr and Delicious and while letting them progress and grow, is seems a mish mosh of stuff.  On the other hand is Google, who on the surface seem to be working toward and integrated product line.  So it is good to see AOL making a concious effort to tie in their products they have built and the ones they are acquiring.

Here is a video Frank took at Techcocktail in Boulder with a interview with the SocialThing team and what they are all about.

Lets all wish Frank and his team over at AOL good luck on the work they have a head of them.