New York – In its third acquisition this week, AOL (NYSE: AOL) said it
has acquired San Francisco-based Thing Labs, the developer of the Brizzly
family of Web-based social software. Financial terms of the deal were not
disclosed. Brizzly’s core service lets users view and post updates to Twitter
and Facebook, as well as view photos and videos, on a single page.
AOL said it
eventually plans to integrate aspects of Brizzly into its Lifestream social
aggregator and publishes, as well as its AIM instant messenger.
Jason Shellen,
Thing Labs’ founder and CEO, and Christopher Wetherell, its vice president of
product and engineering, will lead the AIM product suite, including Lifestream.
Shellen and Wetherell previously were instrumental in creating Google Reader.
"AOL is a different company than it was even a year ago," said Brad
Garlinghouse, the president of AOL’s consumer applications group.
"We have
to fundamentally change the way we think about the consumer experience and the
team at Thing Labs has a vision and a track record of success that we think
will help truly transform the messaging space."
Brizzly’s other products
include Brizzly Picnic, a group chat site; Brizzly Guide, a site dedicated to
explaining social media trending topics; and Brizzly for iPhone.
AOL on Monday
also announced acquisitions of TechCrunch and 5min Media.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/2vshc8v
http://www.thinglabs.com
