{"id":2342,"date":"2008-04-15T09:35:36","date_gmt":"2008-04-15T14:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=2342"},"modified":"2008-04-15T09:35:36","modified_gmt":"2008-04-15T14:35:36","slug":"congrats-to-sphere-i-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/04\/15\/congrats-to-sphere-i-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Congrats to Sphere… I think"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Sphere — the “related-content engine” whose plugin I have been using here for some time — has been bought by AOL<\/a>. As my friend Om Malik is<\/a>, I’m happy for Tony Conrad and the team. At the same time, however, I have to wonder whether becoming part of AOL is such a great idea. Is it better than struggling along as a startup? Perhaps. But Sphere could be exchanging the frying pan for the fire. Chaos may be too strong a word, but AOL has been going through considerable upheaval.<\/p>\n

Obviously, an exit that is in the $25-million range (according to Mike Arrington) is nothing to sneeze at. But will it help Sphere to be part of an online venture that is still trying<\/a> to remake itself, and is part of a gigantic media conglomerate — a conglomerate that may or may not have a commitment to the company longer term? I’m not so sure. I hope that the company’s advisors, who have included Toni Schneider and Matt Mullenweg of Automattic<\/a>, are guiding the company in the right direction (Toni Schneider certainly seems to think it is<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As Kara Swisher says, it would be a shame if<\/a> Sphere were to “fall into one of the dark holes” over at AOL, since Tony and his team seem like a great group. Before I added the Sphere plugin to my blog, I tore a strip off<\/a> the company’s blog search for being irrelevant — and Tony not only took it in stride, but listened to the criticism and the service got better. I wish them nothing but the best, and I hope that AOL is it.<\/p>\n

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So Sphere — the “related-content engine” whose plugin I have been using here for some time — has been bought by AOL. As my friend Om Malik is, I’m happy for Tony Conrad and the team. At the same time, however, I have to wonder whether becoming part of AOL is such a great idea. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Congrats to Sphere… I think”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}