With the Userplane buyout, AOL is heading towards MySpace
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Hot news ― AOL just closed the acquisition of Userplane, a platform for online communities that provides IM, one-to-one live audio and video calls.
Userplane, founded in 2001 and based in Los Angeles, has signed an agreement with AOL since July 28, sealed it last week, and disclosed the news just now. But the company refuses to disclose the financial terms of the agreement.
With this acquisition, AOL is clearly heading towards a fully MySpace competitor. Userplane platform can easily be deployed over a social network, customizable and so pimp AOL Pages functionalities over MySpace communities. For instance, the interactive Kiss/Smack animations, in which a user records a very short action to reuse it as a smiley.
Update ― Jeff Clavier has some details. “Userplane is joining the AIM group, inside the AOL Audience Business Unit, and will be overseen by Marcien Jenckes – the head of the AIM team, and Tina Sharkey – who runs IM and Social Media at AOL. Tina and Marcien are both based on the East Coast, but the whole team of 12 – and the 6 or 7 additional resources they will need to hire in the short term to build the business to a new scale, will remain in Los Angeles.”
Update 2 ― PaidContent adds: “The deal is in the $30-40 million range, my sources say. Truveo, the video serach firm AOL bought, was around $50 million, and Weblogs Inc was about $25 million.”
Aug 14, 2006 | By Nuno
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