AOL Acquires Blogging Search Engine Sphere
New York – AOL today announced that it has acquired Sphere Source, Inc., a foremost provider of contextual-search tools which offers associated content to publishers.Sphere first showed up in 2005 as a blog search engine, but by 2006 had developed into a top provider of contextual content from blogs and other sites. The service has affiliations with sites such as The Wall Street Journal, Time, CNN and Reuters among others. Not surprisingly, Sphere was also featured on various pages of its new parents, AOL.
Based in San Francisco, Sphere applies its contextual-search platform technology to make associations between content from blogs, video, media, photos and advertisements. These contextual outcome are then displayed in a pop-over window or an integrated widget that lets publishers enhance articles by incorporating related articles and blog posts from archived content and across the Web.
“Our center of attention at AOL is providing consumers relevant content wherever they are on the Web, and Sphere’s capabilities fit in perfectly with this effort. Not only will it let us enhance content on our own sites, it will let us distribute our content across Sphere’s growing third-party publisher network,” said Ron Grant, President and COO of AOL. “In addition, this acquisition provides AOL with access to advertising inventory across Sphere’s network, while growing its reach to content publishers via the widget.”
“We are thrilled to be joining AOL,” said Tony Conrad, CEO of Sphere. “AOL’s vast properties and platforms offer us the opportunity to reach publishing and news environments across the Web.”
Prior to the purchase, AOL partnered with Sphere to offer its widget technology on AOL News, http://news.aol.com, and the myAOL service, Mgnet, http://mgnet.aol.com. Sphere’s third-party network includes over 50,000 content publishers and blogs and is live on an average of above 2 billion article pages across the web every month1.
Sphere will continue to function as a closely-held subsidiary of AOL as part of the company’s Programming unit, which is led by Executive Vice President Bill Wilson.