Nearly a year after AOL (NYSE: TWX) bought online profiles manager Socialthing, the tool is set to be released across its MediaGlow publishing unit. The networking tool was quietly launched last week on TheBoot, AOL’s country music related blog, and will be placed on movie fan site Cinematical sometime within the next few weeks. Following that, it will eventually be slipped into MediaGlow’s other 74 sites.

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—Building up Bebo: AOL’s purpose for using Socialthing is to get users of its various blog sites to promote MediaGlow’s content to friends, and all the while, help build up AOL’s social net Bebo, which the Time Warner unit acquired last spring for $850 million. Both Socialthing and Bebo are part of AOL’s People Networks unit. Socialthing will not be limited to Bebo, however. Its “unified sign-on” lets users log into Socialthing using their AOL screenname and password—and soon using their Bebo, Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) or OpenID, without having to create a new account. Once connected, users will be encouraged to share content on a webpage with friends in those other social nets. Release