AOL Buys Content Aggregator Sphere

AOL has bought content aggregator Sphere, in an effort to expand its network of content publishers and (of course) drive online users to AOL pages.

AOL has announced it has purchased Sphere Source, Inc., a San Francisco-based content aggregator service. Sphere offers content aggregation technology based on contextually-sensitive searches, with the goal of bringing together mainstream content with so-called “social content” from blogs, commentaries, and other social networking and non-mainstream sources. AOL already had a relationship with Sphere, which developed widgets already deployed on myAOL and AOL’s news sites. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Our focus at AOL is providing consumers relevant content wherever they are on the Web, and Sphere’s capabilities fit in perfectly with this effort,” said AOL COO and president Ron Grant, in a statement. “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.”

Sphere started out as a search engine for blogs, but Sphere’s publisher network now includes more than 50,000 content providers, micro-publishers, and blog sites, and claims more than 2 billion page views a month across the entire Internet.

“We are joining AOL at an opportune time,” said Sphere CEO Tony Conrad, in his company’s blog. “AOL is doing what great, sustainable business do every so often—they’re reinventing themselves. As the business model of the oldest and one of the biggest Internet businesses evolves, Sphere becomes an important piece of their strategy to reach across and engage the Web.”

AOL has been on a bit of an acquisition binge in its re-invention efforts; a month ago, it announced an agreement to buy social networking site Bebo for $850 million.