Startup Social Network Acquired by AOL

Socialthing!, a website that promises to offer social networking fans quite a revolutionary experience, announced that it had been acquired by AOL, although the transaction had not yet been completed. Socialthing! is a virtual place where people can stay in touch with their friends who are subscribers to other websites. If someone with a Flickr account has recently updated their pictures, their friends from Socialthing! will get a message informing them about it. Same thing happens with, let's say, a subscriber to an online radio station. Their friends will know, by using the website, which is the most recent track added to their playlist.

Although the startup was just launched last year, AOL must have seen great potential in the clever concept. "Being acquired at such an early stage is a pretty good validation that we are onto something really hot." says Matt Galligan, founder and CEO of the company, on its official blog.

He also explains that being acquired by a large company doesn't change anything in their plans in the long term. "We'll continue to work on Socialthing! �developing new features, integrating more services and building a better back end." adds Galligan. The five members of the team at Socialthing! started from scratch, but they had the chance of being elected to participate in the first edition of the TechStars program, which helps 10 out of an initial 300 startups get sponsors and develop their business.

Socialthing!'s CEO assures that the decision is beneficial to both the owners of the small business and its users, be they current and yet to subscribe. Working alone would have meant a slower pace of development, which is clearly not in the best advantage of anyone. "The other opportunity was being able to jump right into a big company, not have the worry of raising money, have the infrastructure and servers to be able to scale to a much larger audience than before, and most of all, have the freedom to make a much better experience for our users." Galligan says.

For now, Socialthing! is still in private beta, so most people are not yet familiar with the entire set of features it brings. The founders of the company invite everyone to send a request that would allow them to sign up to the website.