AOL acquires Thing Labs (Brizzly) | Hacker News Reader

AOL acquires Thing Labs (Brizzly)

corp.aol.com

35 pointsfliph19 comments

If one of AOL's goals was to announce multiple acquisitions in a single day in order to get exponentially more coverage than if they had announced them all days apart, then I'd say mission accomplished.

Wow! I was wondering what would happen to Brizzly after Twitter's new web interface. Brizzly has nice interface for in-stream media and so. I thought their key point was user interface. And I was thinking what would a startup (client) do, whose core selling point is better UI, in case when a platform itself comes up with a better UI.

I wonder how these acquisitions happen? Probably Brizzly knew they will die soon? So they wanted to sell it off? And they have some connections with AOL somehow, and get the word out that they are on sale? Any ideas?

Such acquisitions often happen for talent more than the actual product -- similar to several of the recent acquisitions by FB / Goog.

Also, several of Brizzly core team members are xooglers as is Tim Armstrong (AOL CEO)

I use Brizzly on a daily basis, but I might switch to the "new" Twitter. And I too wonder if they'll die off.

What I love that the new Twitter UI has: * infinite scroll * in-line media (embedded videos/images)

Why I might not make the switch yet: * their mute feature (useful when following someone who's tweeting way too much irrelevant stuff) * they crowd-source explanation of trending topics (offers a quick way to find out what's going on w/o doing a search)

Twitter's implementation of inline media is superior IMO. With Brizzly, images are shown automatically. With #newtwitter, you have to click a tweet to see the image, but it loads up very quickly.

I'd rather not be shown every image someone tweets.

#newtwitter has a "hidden" way of muting people actually: http://praxx.is/post/1207623920/muting-users-in-newtwitter

thanks, good to know. i'm def. switching then... when i get it.

AOL doesn't want to die alone.

"Everyone dies alone."

In an interesting choice of words, the Thing Labs blog (blog.thinglabs.com) refers to this as a "merger".

"We are pleased to announce that as of today, Thing Labs is merging with AOL. This deal has been in the works for a little while, and we’ve been dying to tell you all, but today it’s official!"

I heard that acquisitions often involve a merger with a shell company because of a tax or liability advantage. I searched for info on this, but couldn't find anything. Can somebody please comment on how this works?

Arrington also called Techcrunch's sale a merger at TC Disrupt this morning.

Ah, is it normal for the acquirer to refer to it as an acquisition and the acquired to refer to it as a merger?

GeekSquad founder Robert Stevens always says GeekSquad "acquired" Best Buy.

Does this complement or replace AOL SocialThing? (now AOL Lifestream) What do you think is AOL's strategy?

http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/14/confirmed-aol-acquires-life...

With their record of taking cool companies down the drain, I worry about this AOL shopping spree.

Perhaps it will be good long-term as founders will be able to move on to new things?

Really? What cool companies are you referring to? I only know about AOL acquisitions which have been reasonably successful.

I don't have much in the way of product, but AOL: you are more than welcome to acquire Robot Mode.

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