SOMEWHAT FRANK

Yep, It's True, AOL To Acquire SocialThing

A few weeks ago Mike Arrington gave me a call asking me if, my employer, AOL, had acquired SocialThing. Though it struck very close to home, I had to bite my tongue since the deal had not yet closed and did not comment on the matter. Now that is has been officially released, I can. It is true, AOL has entered into an agreement to acquire SocialThing, the Boulder, Colorado based social aggregating lifestream startup. The terms are not disclosed and the acquisition is still subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions.

I met founders Matt "indiekid" Galligan, Ben Brightwell and the team as they demo'ed at TECH cocktail Boulder on March 6th. Matt is originally from Illinois, like I am, and moved to Boulder to create SocialThing as part of the TechStars incubator program. I got a preview of the SocialThing private beta at TECH cocktail (shown in the video below) which was a few days before they launched at SXSW Interactive and were written up favorably on TechCrunch as being easier to use than FriendFeed. I was impressed by what this startup had created as it offered a wrapper for all your social activities making it easy to post to multiple networks at once. SocialThing is integrated with 13 social media properties including Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Flickr and is currently still in private beta.

Twitter Man Hooks Up With AIM Status

Setting  your status message on a social networking application has become fairly standard but keeping all of your status updates flowing through all your social networks can be somewhat tricky and time consuming. I previously wrote about twitterfeed which I use to send some of my updates from Flickr and SOMEWHAT FRANK directly to Twitter. I also wrote about Matt which helps to post single status updates to multiple twitter accounts. But I just found out about a new way to leverage AIM instant messenger to set my status on Twitter.

SocialThing 2.0

SocialThing, a Boulder, Colorado TechStars startup that aggregates all your online social updates into one slick lifestream, launched into private beta this past March in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive event. I got a chance to get a preview of the product the week before as SocialThing showed off its stuff at TECH cocktail Boulder. I was impressed and have been using it online and via the iPhone version ever since.

Just a few weeks ago, SocialThing rolled out version 2.0 of the product. The previous version was pretty but version 2.0 looks even better than before. It offers users more control of the presentation via the settings. For example users can now sort by friends or by time. Users can also allow others to link directly to a public profile with controls on what appears in the feed. SocialThing has reworked the way they retrieve updates from all your favorite services so that updates are not pulled back in a constant flow but are batched. This allows SocialThing to indicate when there are additional updates that you might want to refresh your page to receive. Additionally, they have rolled out a new iPhone application that allows for on-the-go posting of status and trolling of your lifestream. It is pretty slick.

Lifestream.fm Social Aggregator Examined

Lifestream.fm recently launched into beta, so far I have to say, this is the best “life streaming” service I have found. However, it has tough competition with FriendFeed, SocialThing, and others. Lifestream.fm offers users the ability to aggregate numerous services such as Del.icio.us, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Pownce, Tumblr, and many others. It also allows you to aggregate numerous RSS feeds.

Ping.fm Posts To All Your Microblogs At Once

Microblogging has made it easy to share but with a number of services available one can get overloaded with options making it difficult to keep them all updating the time. Rather than have to stick to one service you can post to a number of services at one time with the help of Ping.fm. Other services like socialthing! and HelloTxt offer similar functionality but I thought it was worth mentioning yet another service as we all look for the ultimate one stop shop for managing all our microblogging needs at once.

AOL Buys Bebo - KickApps Next?, Yahoo Semantic, Flickr Video Coming, Facebook IM Coming, YouTube Goes Hi-Res & SXSW Coverage

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken while recording this Blog Talk Radio episode with Kris "Croncast" Smith and Rox from BeachWalks.tv at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. Photo thanks to Roxanne Darling.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 03.16.2008

5 Startups Demo at TECH cocktail Boulder

On a clear, crisp evening in Boulder, Colorado over two hundred technology enthusiasts piled into The Foundry Billiards Club to better connect and amplify the technology signal of the region. The event, TECH cocktail Boulder in partnership with DEMO, showcased five startups from the local area. The event was sponsored by Boulder-based Lijit and Chicago and potentially soon to be also Boulder-based skinnyCorp - thank you both!

Since TECH cocktail is one of my own creations with co-founder Eric Olson, we were really enjoyed the evening getting to hangout with some of the technology "movers and shakers" in the Denver/Boulder area. For more details check out the official TECH cocktail Boulder 1 photos, our event wrap-up article and ColoradoStartups' wrap-up. Read on for more on the startups that demoed at TECH cocktail Boulder.