A2SM Has Been Acquired

A2SM has been acquired by AOL

This is BIG news. We have been acquired! Who you might ask? None other than AOL! Yes, the same company that recently has bought TechCrunch and the Huffington Post. We’re in good company.

So how much did AOL pay for our little slice of the Web? Well… let’s just say an undisclosed nine-figure amount. Yep, we’re going to living the good life.

Not to worry, though. We’re still going to bring our readers and listeners excellent content for the months and years to come. Only now instead of answering to only ourselves, we now report to Arianna Huffington. We’re still deciding what think of that.

So happy April 1st to one and all.

A2SM Podcast #49 – Say Hello To The HuffinAOLCrunchet

Social Media PodcastIn This Episode:


**** AOL/HuffPo Merger ****

AOL buys Huffington Post
Please Update Your Bookmarks: TechCrunch.com is now HuffingtonCrunch.com
Armstrong’s Internal Memo To AOLers About The HuffPo Deal
When HuffPost Met AOL: “A Merger of Visions”
The Arianna And Tim Show: It’s About Women, Power, And Local

**** Twitter ****

Twitter Is Having Acquisition Talks With Facebook And Google And Thinks It Can Become A $100 Billion Company

Super Bowl Generates 4.5m Tweets
Does Twitter do more to promote Superbowl ads than the ads themselves?
What Do You Think? Let us know in the comments.

User generated Ad (for Doritos)

**** Other Interesting Stuff  ****

Groupon Responds to Super Bowl Ad Controversy

Kenneth Cole Hijacks #Cairo #Egypt hashtag for shameless promotion
Brand Hijacks Hashtag for Promotion

Facebook Leads Top Website Engagement

Picks:

Neal: Radial for iPad

Seth: Another Custom Website Place: Zerply – In private data. http://www.zerply.com/profile/Sethgoldstein

Jody: Ustream – live broadcast. http://www.ustream.tv/
Applications for broadcast and viewing

Emails:

James Basbas, from New Hampshire wrote in. Thanks! He’s going to start contribute to the blog as well so keep an eye out for his articles.

_________________________________________________________

Hi Jody, Seth and Neal

In response to Jody’s question for the 50th show perhaps you could choose the most significant Social Media events of past 12 months and look 12 months ahead and discuss future trends.

Future trends

  • Someone will buy Groupon probable Google or book and really take local coupon ecommerce to another level. Probably will Acquire Foursquare too and tie them together
  • Microsoft to acquire Nokia to try to take leadership of mobile space
  • Increase in mashup services.
  • Valuation bubble will deflate.
  • AOL will continue to make acquisitions and but will continue to decline. Arianna Huffington will leave – AOL with 12 months.

What do you think?

Best regards
John Colley from the UK


We Want To Hear From You! Call us at (478) A2SM-118 or email us at editors@a2sm.com.

Do you want to be a part of A2SM? We’re looking for regular blog contributors. Email us at editors@a2sm.com and we’ll get you setup!

A2SM Podcast #42 – The Holiday, Year End Recap and 2011 Prediction Episode

In This Episode

Social Media Podcast
Internal AOL Email Announcing About.Me Acquisition – http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/internal-aol-email-announcing-about-me-acquisition/
AOL Acquires Personal Profile Startup About.Me

The new Facebook Fan pages are live. No tabs, cleaner interface and more features. – http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2010/12/16/the-new-facebook-fan-pages-are-live-no-tabs-cleaner-interface-more-features/

Facebook Rolling Out Redesigned News Feed Filtering Options – http://mashable.com/2010/12/22/facebook-news-feed-filtering/

Foursquare Adds Photos and Comments – http://mashable.com/2010/12/20/foursquare-photos/

Another Year Of Free Calling To The U.S. And Canada – http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/gmail-calling-free/

THIS JUST IN: Santa being tracked by Norad – http://lifehacker.com/5717029/track-santas-journey-across-the-globe-with-google-and-norad

2010 Recap: 3 Top Stories

Neal: iPad

Seth: Skype Going Down

Jody: Facebook’s “exploding”…huge impact – Movie – The Social Network, Man of the Year… “Zuck”

Our Predictions for 2011

Neal: Cyberwar.

Seth: The Year of the Tablet Computer Finally Arrives with Android and Honeycomb; Blackberry and of course Apple. Maybe even HP and Web OS.

Jody: The Year of the MOSH of Social Media…Convergence of platforms, streamlining the social-scape.

Picks

Neal: http://inceptiontheapp.com/ – The movie app for the iOS

Seth: http://www.pinboard.in – Delicious Replacement – Not Free But Affordable!
http://pinboard.in/u:sethgoldstein

Jody: http://www.marketsamurai.com – affordable keyword research tool and more.

Outgoing Music Auld Lang Syne by Friction Bailey

Happy Holidays from the A2SM Editors Neal, Jody and Seth

Link Post for January 4th

This is the A2SM Link Post for January 4th:

  • 4 Ways for Augmented Reality to Get Past the Hype – GigaOM – With 197 million augmented reality-capable smartphones set to be in the global market by 2012, up from nearly 91 million in 2010, the building blocks are falling into place for people to merge digital information with their view of the physical world. But while we’re just getting to the point that normal users can see the promise of augmented reality for themselves, there’s still a long way to go.
  • If You Tweet, He Will Come: Mayor Cory Booker Shovels Snow for a NJ Resident – As the snow piled up on New Year’s Eve, Jersey resident Ravie Rave didn’t call a snow plow service to take care of her 65-year-old father’s walk — she tweeted at Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
  • CES 2010: What to Expect [VIDEO] – What to expect from CES 2010. From the team at Mashable.com
  • Former Time Warner CEO Apologizes for “Worst Deal of the Century” [VIDEO] – Now that Time Warner and AOL are officially dissolved, those behind the deal – originally valued at $164 billion – are speaking out. This morning, former Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin and AOL co-founder Steve Case discussed the deal on CNBC as we approach its tenth anniversary.
  • Las Vegas Courthouse Shooting: Audio Captured on YouTube [VIDEO] – A deadly shooting occurred in the lobby of a Las Vegas federal courthouse building. According to reports from CNN, the suspected gunman was shot and killed after opening fire on federal personnel. A citizen journalist got it all on tape.
  • News Corp. Unloads Rotten Tomatoes Onto Flixster – News Corp is unloading more of its digital assets. This time it’s the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, which is being acquired by startup Flixster, which has the most popular movie app for the iPhone and other mobile devices. The purchase price was not disclosed, but it was at least in part a stock transaction. News Corp now owns a minority stake in Flixster, which has only raised a total of $7 million in venture capital.
  • Pinging In The New Year: Seesmic Acquires Ping.fm – Well that didn’t take long. Just four days in 2010 and we already have an acquisition. Social networking application Seesmic has acquired the social status updater Ping.fm.
  • Video: iPhone hacked to support the Magic Mouse – Those gifted gents over at the BTStack might just be too clever for their own good. First they blow our minds by sneaking Wiimote support onto the iPhone, and then tickle our productivity-loving souls by hacking in Bluetooth keyboard support. It’s a bit awkward to be typing away on a physical keyboard, only to have to reach over and poke the screen whenever you want to do something – wouldn’t it be nice to be able to use a mouse instead?
  • Vegas-bound! What to expect from CES – All of us at CrunchGear are prepping for the pain-fest we all know as the Consumer Electronics Show. For those not aware, every January, just after they’ve waddled away from the all-you-can-eat buffet called the Holidays, journalists, bloggers, and big box electronics buyers all head to Las Vegas for more of the same.
  • Worlds Collide: Twitter Has More Uptime Than Facebook – If one of Twitter’s New Year’s resolutions is to reduce sightings of the fail whale, it is off to a good start. Last week, the service was up a laudable 97.97 percent of the time, beating out even Facebook’s availability of 97.22 percent, according to benchmarks published by AlertSite. The only site in the benchmark with better uptime was YouTube, with 99.13 percent availability during the week. (MySpace and LinkedIn showed below average uptimes of 94.74 percent and 95.48 percent, respectively).