Posts tagged ‘bebo’

AOL to buy Bebo for $850 million

March 13th 2008 by Andrew Banks in General, WebsitesNo Comments »

Various websites are reporting that AOL has come through as the buyer of Bebo for the small sum of $850 million.

The BBC is reporting “Rumours that the social network Bebo would be swallowed up by someone have been swirling around for at least a year. Google, Yahoo, MySpace and Viacom have all been names as potential suitors. Now the truth is out – and it’s AOL which has picked up the prize for $850m”

Time Warner have now confirmed this with a statement on their website and have also confirmed that this is a purely cash deal.

“AOL announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Bebo (http://www.bebo.com),a leading global social media network. Together with its AIM and ICQ personal communications network, the acquisition will give AOL a premier position in the fast growing world of social media with a network of approximately 80 million unique users.”

I strongly suspect that the ongoing saga with Microsoft trying to by Yahoo is going to force a period of consolidation between the larger players in social marketing and search as they try to strengthen their position in the market place. It’s started with Bebo and I predict we will see a lot more of this in the coming months as organisation try to strengthen their position and protect themselves from being bought out.
So who do you expect to be next and are we seeing another major dot com boom era? Should we expect the same as last time and prepare for the bust to follow?