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AOL yesterday announced it had acquired Buy.at in a move that will see the affiliate network becoming part of its ‘all-in-one’ online ad unit Platform A.

With AOL failing to bag Tradedoubler last year, the deal means it has finally got its teeth into a performance medium that we estimate generated more than £3bn in sales for UK businesses in 2007.

We caught up briefly with Buy.at CEO Kevin Cornils on what the buyout will mean for the company, including cross-selling opportunities, greater reach and cash for expansion abroad.

Professional social network LinkedIn has launched a developer platform as well as a redesign of its website.

As previously outlined by CEO Dan Nye, the new "Intelligent Application" platform will not be as open as that of rival Facebook, and will be limited to ‘business productivity applications’.

Dubbed ‘Platform A’, the group will effectively create a huge ad network out of AOL’s recent acquisitions, including Advertising.com, behavioural targeting network Tacoda, ad serving company AdTech, video ad firm Lightningcast and mobile ad network Third Screen Media.

Thousands of applications have been created on Facebook’s open platform since the social network opened up to developers earlier this year. But launching one, and generating interest, is not necessarily easy.

‘Attitudinal matching’ company Synature is one UK firm that has already taken the plunge, launching a version of its qubox software that allows Facebook members to search for like-minded people on the site, as well as potentially becoming a platform for targeted advertising. Here, John Woods, its CEO, talks about the challenges the company faced, and why he thinks the API can be a significant opportunity for brands.

Skype founder Niklas Zennström recently named AllPeers among Europe’s four most innovative tech start-ups - and you can't really argue with him.

Launched at the end of August after four years of development work, AllPeers’ private P2P platform allows users to share videos, photos, webpages and other paraphernalia with their family and friends.

But next year, it also intends to expand its technology to allow files to be shared publicly, and to offer content creators a chance to earn money through micro-payments, rather than through advertising.

We met up with CEO Cedric Maloux and CTO Matt Gertner to find out more.

Google has today acquired Jotspot, a three year old California-based company which develops platforms for building wiki-based applications.

Wikis, popularised by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, are platforms for user-generated content. Users can create, modify and even delete information, to build up pages, in a structured format.