America Online owns quite a few very popular and very profitable music, teen, and gossip sites, TMZ for instance, that we marketing and PR professionals and uber-geeks scoff at. Well, I think AOL makes good investment devisions. I also think that they do a good job of not over-branding their possessions as being AOL. Bebo is another one of those super-popular but under-coveted Social Networking Services that are probably under-valued (cheap at $850 million) and more stable, less fickle. The opposite of Facebook, which, which popular, is over-valued, under-profitable, and could implode in the model of MySpace. Here’s the poop about the purchase, via c|net.
In an unexpected move, AOL has acquired social-networking site Bebo. The price tag: $850 million in cash.
Rumors had floated over the past few months that Bebo, which has over 40 million members, was up for sale. Reports suggested a $1 billion price tag, but there were few hints as to potential buyers. Though Bebo had already partnered with AOL’s AIM messaging client to facilitate friend-invite interoperability between the two services, even the most creative blogger speculation didn’t seem to point to AOL eventually buying the social network.
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