Ask & AOL
New York -- Seeking to boost its mobile offerings like its fellow portal Yahoo, AOL too is tempted to adapt a new reality where mobile is only going to become increasingly important. The struggling company on Tuesday said that it has acquired Rally Up, a budding creator of the Rally Up and FacePlant social networking apps for the iPhone and iPad that lets users share their locations with select friends, for an undisclosed amount.
The company, which was established last year, has unleashed a product called Rally Up, a location-based service that enables users to unify private micro blogging with location, enabling them to share text, photos and direct messages. Rally Up focuses on mobile apps and it is probably best known for its Rally Up social networking app.
Similar to Foursquare, the app positions itself as a social network for “people that actually should know your location,” such as family members and close acquaintances. Users can communicate with each other and “check-in” to locations.
According to an announcement from AOL, the Dulles, Va.-based Internet services company, “For the first time, AOL mobile applications will consist not only of mobile versions of its popular desktop and web offerings, but also will include entirely new products that launch first on mobile devices.” The announcement of the new strategy comes two months after AOL hired Palm VP David Temkin to head up its mobile efforts.
Financial terms of the deal were not revealed.
The company's nine-person team will join the larger company's consumer applications and mobile division, which will be based at AOL's new West Coast office in Palo Alto, Calif., where they will work under Temkin, the company''s vice president of mobile.
“We are excited to join the AOL team for the opportunity to work with great leaders like Brad and David and because we are impressed with AOL's drive to innovate on mobile devices,” Sol Lipman, CEO of Rally Up, said in a statement.
AOL will probably accommodate Rally Up app going but the importance is that the mobile company's team will take a large role in helping AOL transition to a mobile-first strategy. This means that the company will have its desktop offerings come to the phones but it will also launch products first for smartphones and feature phones.
“Within the last year, the Rally Up team has exhibited its keen understanding of the way that people want to use their mobile devices to interact, share and better communicate and of the tools necessary to address those needs,” said AOL's Temkin, in a prepared statement. “We are delighted to have such a talented group of mobile innovators join AOL, especially given the rapid evolution of this space.”
AOL did not say what particular sector it intends to target as part of its mobile strategy. However, in addition to the social networking app, Rally Up is also behind another app called FacePlant, another application that is currently under review by Apple, which allow users to view which of their friends are available to communicate on the FaceTime application available on Apple Inc.'s iPhone 4. Lipman says AOL has bought it too.
Peter Koht, economic development coordinator for the city of Santa Cruz, said he is happy at Rally Up's success.
“AOL made a great acquisition, securing good products and the talent that built them,” Koht said. “As the Rally Up team become more central to AOL's mobile strategy, I hope the company realizes that Santa Cruz's startup ecosystem was an essential element to their success.”
In fact, AOL rival Google estimates that the proliferation of smartphones will make desktops “irrelevant” in as few as three years. We have seen Google's adjustment for this, as this was one of the main reasons it introduced the Android operating system and a variety of mobile-friendly websites.
