Confirmed: AOL Acquires FriendFeed Competitor Socialthing
Wow, I signed up a while ago for SocialThing! beta. I like it, but unfortunately I dont use Twitter often as I used to. And there are too many social networks to choose over…I use Friendfeed for a couple of reasons…
- More friends I know are on Friendfeed.
- I can reply to Twitter friends from Friendfeed.com
- It has several greasemonkey userscripts for Friendfeed. I like Greasemonkey.
- It has more social networking accounts.
Update: I just visited SocialThing!. Ahh, well now they do have Twitter/Pownce reply features, and also it has Twitter/Facebook/Pownce posting. Maybe I should turn over to SocialThing!, but I will see if they have good Greasemonkey userscripts.
Update 2: No userscripts for Socialthing!. Hmm.. Well, I guess I will give Socialthing! a try. I like it so far. I just start posting from Socialthing!. But I wonder why no userscripts for Socialthing!? I wish I knew how to write scripts.
Update 3: Check someone’s entry about Socialthing! and Friendfeed here.
I gotta to keep an eye on it and maybe I will able to use it again… but I dont use Bebo.. I use Facebook. I still use AIM, so I will see what they do with it on AIM…
***************************************
from TechCrunch by Jason Kincaid
We’ve received confirmation from AOL that the company has acquired Socialthing!, a lifestreaming service that competes with FriendFeed. We originally reported the deal on August 1.
AOL says that the Socialthing! team will report to SVP of AOL and GM of People Networks David Liu, and will be incorporated into its People Networks division. Socialthing’s lifestreaming will be integrated into a number of AOL’s community properties, including its social network Bebo and AIM, its popular chat service.
The acquisition comes during a tough time for AOL, which has recently been forced to institute a number of budget cuts. Despite its setbacks, AOL is still keen on keeping its valuable social properties healthy, and likely saw Socialthing! as a relatively cheap investment (the aquistion price was not released, but it was probably fairly small).
Socialthing launched only five months ago in private beta. Unlike most social news aggregators, the site employs a smart algorithm that can figure out who you’re friends with, so you don’t have to explicitly define a friends list for each service.
