DealTracker - AOL Buys Sphere’s Blog Content Engine
AOL has recently bought over Sphere - a blog content engine that launched in 2006 (check out their blog post). While the price is not being disclosed, TechCrunch estimates it in the $25 million range. Amazing considering they are just about 30 months old, and had raised $3.5 million in venture capital over two rounds.
Sphere initially launched as a blog search engine, but quickly realised that they were beaten in the game by Technorati and Google BlogSearch. CEO Tony Conrad, quickly adapted to the changing market and focused on delivering blog results relevant to content delivered by big news and content sites. Time was the first to go live with “Sphere It” links, and most of the big news sites followed. As a product this adds fabulous value for any content site.
I myself owe some amount of traffic to the sphere links that appear at the bottom of sites such as the Wall Street Journal.
Filed under: Deal Tracker