AOL has acquired the social site, Socialthing. AOL obviously has some plans for the site as the site has been in closed beta since its inception last year.
The announcement on the Socialthing blog came as no surprise as it had been rumored for several weeks. What is surprising is that AOL has opened their purse strings to acquire anything given their recent financial history.
Perhaps AOL can become a little more user friendly by taking on this site. Their first step is to open the site from beta to full access. Socialthing sounds quite happy with the acquisition and they seem to feel that AOL have a lot to add to the site. From the blog release of the acquisition:
…..these kinds of acquisitions come some really cool opportunities. Specifically speaking, we have a really cool opportunity ahead of us to integrate into some other AOL products that might change the way you see social aggregation. AIM is a really big target for us, both on the aggregation and on the publishing side, so you can imagine how excited we are to be able to work alongside the team.
I am sure that AOL could add a lot of functionality to a social site like this. It will be interesting to see if it does open up to new users or stay in private beta and get lost and forgotten – another good site left to go stale in the acquisition cupboards.
