You my have seen the rumors, the leaks, etc. and while we just had to sit here and watch it all go down, we wanted nothing more than to tell the entire world how excited we are.

This post has been a long time coming and we’re very excited to say that we’re in the last few days of being acquired by AOL. There’s so many questions that I know everyone is asking, so I was hoping to answer a decent amount of them here. Also, you are more than welcome to jump in and toss your comments our way; we will do everything to get your questions answered.

One thing I want to note before I really go into anything else was what this meant to us. Obviously there’s a part of it that’s just simply nice to say that we (as entrepreneurs, engineers and novices to the internet startup game) have had a success. Being acquired at such an early stage is a pretty good validation that we are onto something really hot. But beyond all of that, at the end of the day, we just wanted do something that was both beneficial to us, and our users. On one hand that may have meant raising more money, continuing down the path we were going down and just cranking away at the product we’ve worked on for more than a year now. But the other opportunity was being able to jump right into a big company, not have the worry of raising money, have the infrastructure and servers to be able to scale to a much larger audience than before, and most of all, have the freedom to make a much better experience for our users.

I know the biggest question asked will be “So what happens to Socialthing! now?” so I thought I’d get that out of the way first:

While for some time we’ll be cranking away on improving our back end to improve stability and scalability, we’re wanting to keep the experience much of the same way that it is today. We’ll continue to work on Socialthing! …developing new features, integrating more services and building a better back end.

But with these kinds of acquisitions come some really cool opportunities. Specifically speaking, we have a really cool opportunity ahead of us to integrate into some other AOL products that might change the way you see social aggregation. AIM is a really big target for us, both on the aggregation and on the publishing side, so you can imagine how excited we are to be able to work along side the team.

There’s going to be a whole lot more about what we’re up to soon…but for now…let us know your questions! We’d love to hear them!

We’ve got so many people to thank, so I’m just going to toss in the obligatory “acceptance speech” list here:

TechStars for giving us the most amazing opportunity. They saw something special in us and gave us the opportunity we needed to really building something cool. Also, a special thanks to all the TechStars teams for all of your support…

Jason Mendelson. This guy is amazing. The day that we met him, he told us he didn’t believe in what we were doing, didn’t think it’d go anywhere, and we were going to have to prove him wrong. And prove him wrong, we did indeed. Jason is one of the managing partners over at the Boulder-based venture capital firm, Foundry Group. He was one of our early mentors, and now one of our biggest cheerleaders. It’s been an absolute pleasure being able to work with him.

eonBusiness for helping us out with our first investment round. From the first day that we met eon, we knew that they were the right kind of partner for us to work with for investment. Dave and Rob were both incredibly knowledgeable about the business aspects, while Frank acted as a mentor to our development team…helping us through scaling issues and more.

Robert Reich and the Denver/Boulder New Tech Meetup for being such a cornerstone in building the Boulder tech community up to where it is today. When we presented for the first time in August of 2007, there was only about 100 people in the room, but just last week we saw such an incredible turnout that more than 50 people had standing room only.

Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado for giving us an opportunity to give back to the community that made us who we are. Earlier this year, we pledged 1% of our equity to the EFCo so that we might be able to have a direct hand in building a better, stronger entrepreneurial community.

Frank Gruber for providing so many companies with the opportunity to show their stuff to the locals. Frank runs TechCocktail, a shindig where a bunch of geeks show up, show their stuff, and get their drink on.

Dave Morin for being a personal mentor to me, as well as an incredible mind to tap when we just needed someone to bounce ideas off of.

All of our partners that we work with on a regular basis for integration…because without them, Socialthing! wouldn’t exist. We’ve loved working with companies like Facebook, Twitter and the many others that deserve our praise.

And of course, last but not least… AOL. While we’ve seen some dark years in the AOL universe, the company that we got acquired by is a very different company than they were those years ago. We’re so excited about the opportunity that we have in front of us, as well as very happy that someone saw in Socialthing! what has made us excited for so long.

There’s so many people that I’m sure we’re missing here, but without a doubt, we’d also like to thank our friends, family and everyone else who has helped us along the way.

While the journey now ends for the company known as Socialthing, Inc., the journey has just started for Socialthing! and the many other products we intend to give the “Socialthing! touch” to inside of AOL. We’re excited to have this opportunity and can’t wait to show AOL and the world what we’re made of. Thanks to everyone.