AOL has announced that it has acquired Sphere, the content engine.  Sphere is a contextual search engine which delivers matching content from blogs, videos, photos and other media channels.  The discovered content is then displayed in a pop-over window or through a widget.  The Sphere widget lets publishers better   engage their audience by providing related articles and blog posts from archived content and across the Web.  The Sphere third-party publisher network includes large web properties like Time, Reuters, CNN and blogs like GigaOm and TechCrunch.

Sphere which started off as a blog search engine competing with the likes of Technorati and Google Blog Search later transformed itself into a related content discovery engine by expanding its focus to other media types like videos and photos.

AOL which was already using the Sphere widget on its web properties like AOL News and myAOL will now distribute its content across the Sphere’s publisher network.  The deal also provides AOL an access to the advertising inventory across Sphere’s network.

The acquisition of Sphere marks another move by AOL in becoming a content and social network powered company supported through revenues generated from advertising.

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