As AOL Reinvents Itself

A smart little acquisition occured today. AOL bought an Instant Messaging service that powers, among others, MySpace.

Userplane licenses its technology to more than 100,000 sites.

I really like plays like this that power thousands of web sites.

Photobucket is an example of a similar play, that acts as a repository for photos that can be shared on multiple portals (MySpace, Flickr, Piczo …). AOL should buy them as well.