AOL bought social network Bebo for $850m
AOL said Thursday it will pay $850 million to acquire the online hangout Bebo, giving the struggling Internet company a foothold in an expanding business. Bebo is one of the largest social networks in Britain, is ranked No. 1 in Ireland and New Zealand and has a global membership of more than 40 million, according to AOL. In the United States, however, it ranks third behind MySpace and Facebook. Ron Grant, AOL’s president and chief operating officer, said the deal should help AOL expand internationally and Bebo grow in the United States.The all-cash deal, expected to close in a month, also should give AOL an engaged audience from which it can generate additional advertising revenue.AOL has been looking for ways to boost its advertising revenue to offset steep declines in dial-up Internet subscriptions.
After several quarters of strong growth, AOL’s advertising expansion has been slowing, putting pressure on the company’s parent, Time Warner Inc., to sell off the Internet unit. The deal is an acknowledgment that AOL still needs to seek additional outlets for expanding its audience and its advertising opportunities. But it also underscores the growing value of social networks such as Bebo to media companies as potential gold mines for online advertising dollars. News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005, but has estimated the network is now worth more than $15 billion. News Corp. also owns the Fox television and movie studios in addition to its newspaper and Internet holdings.
Source: CBS, Daniweb
Comments(33)
Damn i hate aol. Wonder what they will do to bebo.
When is AOL going to realize that the game is over for them and Time Warner will soon be unloading their money-losing operation in the near future?
How on earth would you say they are struggeling when they can buy something for that amount of money. Of course they’re not struggeling, they’re just not getting enough money, that’s not struggeling. That’s greedy.
im from ireland and the statemenrt is rite everyone is on bebo here remember hearing that its the n0.1 clicked site ova here ahead of google . well not sure wot aol are goin to do wit the site hope its a positive cuz at the mo the site is brilliant practically live on it wen im online …good post
@ 3 just cuz u spend money dosent mean u hav it its prob a loan on which theyll gain profit bk from bebo ads and generate a profit ova a number of years good investment from their point of view
hope they close it down tbh
up until now I’ve never heard of Bebo
Only time is heard of it was when the marine puppy killer was found to have a page there, that must say something about its community.
dk was wrong i got an error message saying that i have to restart my aol in order to see my buddy list and this only happens to one of my screenames the other one is fine i could the list on that one. and the rest like my dads my sisters theres are ok. it only happens on my screen name well one of my screenname.
I Fooking hate bebo, hope it dies LoL
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@ 8 Andr0id
March 13th, 2008 | 23:51
Quote: “Only time is heard of it was when the marine puppy killer was found to have a page there, that must say something about its community.”
What are you talking about you ignorant fool. Bebo has over 40 million users! Just because the marine/army? person that killed a pup has an account on there, does not mean that everybody on the Bebo social networking site has the same mentality.
By your reasoning, everybody on MySpace is a paedophile because there have been accounts closed related to paedophilia.
Learn to think about what you have to say before you go and spew some rubbish on an internet forum!
Also, learn to use the English language properly:
You: “Only time is heard of it … ”
Should be: The only time {that} I’ve heard of it …
up until now I’ve never heard of Bebo
Also, many of the dogs over there have diseases (rabies, etc) so they are somewhat of a threat to the men. The dogs will eventually succumb to their diseases anyway.
I still do not condone the way that the man killed the pup. He could have been a lot more humane about it.
@ 12 TempPD
Respect!
@ 4 & 5 BIGBROTHER
March 13th, 2008 | 22:55
OMG! U r so cul wit ur shrt writn! Haha, LOL!
The only reason people use the SMS style of writing is because the text messing system has a very limited number of characters that it can transfer.
Do you write like that in school/college? What are you doing? The Junior Cert or something?
And by the way, I am from Ireland too and use Bebo.
@ 15 BIGBROTHER
March 14th, 2008 | 01:44
Thanks for the respect! I appreciate it.
Sorry for the “attack” in my message (# 16). I’m sure you are a genuinely nice person and have proper morals, views, etc. Its just that I get very annoyed with people using shorthand for writing when there is absolutely no need of it!
Anyway, thanks again. No hard feelings I hope!
none takin’ Haha . ur going off the issue there guess your a grammar teacher or write dictionaries for a living!. i find bebo a nice little interface for keeping in touch with mates ….not to sure about my space only heard of facebook awhile back on sky news that time businesses tried to ban employees from using it. have yous heard of Second Life thats meant to be off the chart big time mix between sims and social networking. surprised that its not as popular probably still unknown to most
@ 18 BIGBROTHER
March 14th, 2008 | 02:17
No, I’m not a grammar teacher and I certainly don’t write dictionaries for a living
I’m doing my Masters in Computing now.
I like Bebo very much. I often use it to chat with my friends all over Ireland, the ones I met in Germany and France, my friend from Spain and some other places too. I also use it to talk to my friends who are in Australia.
I think MySpace is more prevalent in the US. I have a FaceBook account but I rarely use it. The only reason I use FaceBook is because it is fairly popular in the UK and I have some cousins and friends there so I use that to keep in touch with them; it is much easier for me to use FaceBook than getting all of them to change to Bebo!!
Yes, I’ve heard of Second Life. I have an account and use it on occasion, perhaps once or twice a week. Some of my friends have heard of it but I don’t think any of them use it. With SL you are represented by an avatar so it is not like it is “you” that the other people are interacting with. I have made some friends on SL but it just isn’t the same as making friends on Bebo. Perhaps if more of my friends were using SL I would use it more often.
A problem with SL is that it is “live” in that you have to be actively participating in the world in order to interact. You don’t get this problem with “normal” social networking sites like Bebo because you can just reply to a message/comment later on.
Another problem with Second Life is that there is some configuration to be done with ports if you are behind firewalls, etc. For example, I know some people who can’t access it because the student village in which they are living only allows certain ports to be used. Obviously you can get around this by VPNing into a proxy machine and use that machine as your internet connection but not many people would know about that.
@18 BIGBROTHER
You’ll find that a lot of people have indeed heard of second life – I first heard of it on the Richard and Judy show here in Britain a while back. I don’t personally care much for these sites, but each to their own I guess.
P.S. For all those people thinking of joining Bebo, just know that they’ll never leave you alone if you quit. Expect a LOT of junk coming through your inbox if you ever go elsewhere.
The sooner bebo dies the better imho
it’s full of idiots and sluts
@12
Keep trying to find excuses and downplay what he did, it amuses me.
@ 22 Andr0id
March 14th, 2008 | 03:00
Look at my post (#14 March 14th, 2008 | 01:43) and read the sentences “I still do not condone the way that the man killed the pup. He could have been a lot more humane about it.”
I am in no way trying to downplay what he did! What he did was cruel, I am not arguing with you about that! The pup still needed to be euthanised though! Do you really think if your local dog pound found a dog with a serious disease that they would not put it down?
I was arguing with you about the way you generalised the Bebo community collectively as, lets say, “puppy killers”.
@21 is it really full of sluts cuz that would make me want to join
I would rather have mankind die then watching someone torture a puppy, unless the puppy had a gun or knife and knew how to use it!!
yeah i think its time a moderator thought about closing this topic replies are getting offensive
The only thing that everyone who uses Bebo,Facebook and whatever other online networking site that they use is that they can all Just about master the art of using a keyboard ……..Thats ALL they have in common……whatever happened to having real freinds and talking face to face???
Wonder if this is how Spitzer met Hooker #9….?
lol … it’s basically just myspace for 13-14 yr olds
so not suprising then that it’s struggling – how do they make money from advertising when their main userbase is too young to have creditcard or any money to spend :s
i quit bebo and dont get spam from them
@ 27 moochyhadin
March 14th, 2008 | 12:16
There are many different categories of people who use social networking sites. They all just haven’t mastered the keyboard as you say.
About your comment on why not “face to face?” well what about when your friends are in a different country or on the other side of the world? What will I do, catch a flight every weekend? Even with some video conferencing tool, Skype or whatever, it is still not very practical because of organising time-slots or even large time-zone differences.
@ 29 marktd
March 14th, 2008 | 13:19
It is not “basically just myspace for 13-14 yr olds”. It is mostly targeted at school and college students (mostly under 25). For people who had left school/college before Bebo was created it is not much use for them really.
About your comment “so not suprising then that it’s struggling”; the article suggests that AOL is struggling, not Bebo!
Bebo is still expanding and AOL is trying to get advertising revenue by from it “giving the struggling Internet company {AOL} a foothold in an expanding business {social networking, Bebo}
@lala
yes there was a problem with the AIM for about 3 hours, there were some servers that went down in the data center