Bye, Bye Bebo – AOL Dumps the Popular Social Site

Source: AP

Hoping to put a little more cash into their coffers, AOL will sell the large social media site they bought for $850 million just a couple years ago.

AOL is paring back its ambitions in the world of online social networking, selling a website called Bebo that it bought a little more than two years ago for $850 million.

Bebo, which launched in 2005, has failed to match the huge popularity of sites like Facebook and Twitter.

AOL Inc., which is based in New York, tried to use the site to drive traffic to its other ad-supported Web properties, but it hasn’t taken off. The site had about 5 million users in February, according to comScore Inc., compared with Facebook’s 210 million. AOL said in April it planned to shut the site or sell it.

The buyer is the private investment firm Criterion Capital Partners LLC.

The California company did not say how much it is paying, but analysts have speculated that the site would fetch just a fraction of what AOL paid for it.

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Bebo brings founder Michael Birch back as advisor at 9:52am 9th December 2010 [...] its broader content and service offerings. That didn’t really work out, and earlier this year AOL sold Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount—although it was likely much less than [...]
josephsmith smith at 3:23am 14th November 2010 AOL’s advertising revenues declined 18 percent in the quarter to $507 million (which was flat with the third quarter). And it’s total revenues, including from dial-up subscriptions, was $968 million, down 23 percent. http://mysticwhite.org/