AOL’s comeback continues by buying social network Bebo

Written on March 13, 2008 – 1:51 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

AOL is continuing its buying spree by acquiring Bebo. Reuters reports that Time Warner’s Internet division bought the social network for 850 million US dollars, in cash.

AOL Corporate Bebo has 40 million users and may call itself no.1 in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand. In the US is has a respectable third place behind MySpace and Facebook.

“Bebo’s dynamic management team recognizes that the Internet is less about destination and more about connecting people, culture and lifestyles,” AOL President Ron Grant said in a statement. I’ll translate it for you: Now we can target the adds of recently bought online affiliate marketing network Buy.at and the widgets of Goowy Media even better! Moreover, we’re catching up with Microsoft again!

One thing is for sure though, thanks to mother company Time Warner, AOL is making a remarkable comeback as an Internet giant.

[WebTipr: David Petherick, United Kingdom]

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About the author: Ernst-Jan is a blogger and journalist, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five.

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3 comments to “AOL’s comeback continues by buying social network Bebo”

By Patrick de Laive on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply

Wow, nice exit. Congrats to the team.
By Mark on Mar 13, 2008 | Reply

Cheers for the team at Bebo, truly. I thought they would be worth a bit more though. By the way, I wonder why none of the tech blogs ever mention Skyrock or Hi5, although they are social networks that gather much more traffic than the more oft-mentioned Bebo and Netlog (source: Alexa).
By Jeroen Bakker on Mar 14, 2008 | Reply

Impressive.