Dulles, Va. - AOL (NYSE: TWX) announced on Tuesday that it has acquired San Francisco-based Sphere Source, a developer of contextual search tools which offers related content to publishers.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2005 by Tony Conrad, Martin Remy, Steve Nieker and Toni Schneider, Sphere uses its technology to make connections between content from blogs, video, media, photos and advertisements.

The results are then displayed either in a pop-over window or an integrated widget that lets publishers incorporate related articles and blog posts.

Sphere's network includes more than 50,000 content publishers and blogs.

Prior to the acquisition, AOL partnered with Sphere to offer its widget technology on AOL News and the myAOL service, Mgnet.

Sphere will operate as part of AOL's Programming division, which is led by Bill Wilson.

Related Links:
http://corp.aol.com/press_releases/2008/04/aol-acquires-sphere

http://www.sphere.com