Investment bank Allen & Co. has been shopping Bebo for some time. A number of potential buyers passed on the company, including News Corp., Microsoft and Google, our sources say. Yahoo may have also taken a long look, but recent woes probably prohibit it from doing any large transactions.
AOL’s intention, they told press in a briefing call this morning, is to marry AIM and ICQ with a proper social network. At a high level, AOL is saying they are basing much of their go forward social networking strategy around AIM. Layering in Bebo, they say, lets people communicate both synchronously and asynchronously. The goal is to allow people to both express themselves and extend existing relationships. AIM users have 100 buddies on average. Bebo’s platform allows those users to share and distribute media as well.
AOL’s also talking about their Platform A advertising platform which can blend big brand advertising along with performance. Bebo’s page views will be enticing to those brands to the extent they can track how those ads do.
Current President Joanna Shields (middle in picture) will continue to run Bebo and will report to AOL President Ron Grant (right in picture). Founders Michael Birch and Xochi Birch will shortly be leaving the startup, apparently. Rumor has it, though, that Shields has effectively run the company for some time. Bebo was originally launched in 2005.
Bebo is the second largest social network in the U.K. (its largest market) after Facebook. Recent Comscore data says Bebo has 22 million unique visitors and 11 billion page views; AOL said Bebo users spend an average of 40 minutes a day on the site in a press briefing. The company claims 40 million users.
Source: Techcrunch.com
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