AOL Buys Socialthing, a Social Aggregator

Posted on August 1, 2008

TechCrunch reports that AOL has acquired Socialthing, a social aggregator currently in private beta. Socialthing allows you to interact with several microblogging services including Plurk, Pownce and Twitter. You can also update to these services using Socialthing.

AOL clearly is very interested in lifestreaming because it was recently reported by Somewhat Frank that AOL recently quietly launched a social aggregator tool called Buddy Updates. You can read an overview of Buddy Updates here on lifestreamblog.com.

One of the reasons AOL may have been quiet about Buddy Updates is because they plan to use Socialthing instead. It remains to be seen whether AOL will use Buddy Updates or Socialthing or both websites as its lifestreaming offerings. They do have the large AIM userbase to tap into once they are ready to start promoting these new services.