Can AOL Take Over The Mobile Experience?

from the do-people-want-that? dept

AOL has clearly been looking for ways to make itself relevant again -- and it's latest strategy appears to be a plan to go wireless by buying Wildseed. Wildseed has been around for years with an interesting idea, but no good way to market it. The original idea was to build special faceplates for phones that would include a special user interface and content, thereby routing around the mobile operator and making it so the user didn't even have to download anything. They've also extended that by just offering the personalization software to phone operators and operators themselves, but it's never seemed like they've gotten much traction. Meanwhile, AOL has tried to move into the mobile space slowly, doing simple deals with operators to move things like AOL instant messenger onto mobile devices, but never really taking a major step into the wireless world. However, the purchase of Wildseed may help out both companies to a certain extent. It gives Wildseed serious backing... and it gives AOL a better way to get what it wants onto mobile devices. Of course, there's still the very, very big question of whether or not anyone actually cares to have an AOL environment on their phones, but that's a different issue for AOL to work out.

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