AOL To Sell Bebo?

There are rumors that AOL is trying to sell social networking site Bebo just 10 months after buying it for $850 million.

The Guardian reports that Bebo is denying rumors that AOL is trying to sell it, just 10 months after buying it for $850 million. The asking price is supposed to be just $200 million, slightly under a quarter of the price paid.

According to TechCrunch UK, AOL executives have been disappointed with Bebo’s performance, and have been dawdling in integrating it with other AOL services, like e-mail and instant messaging.

A Bebo spokesman said:

"The whole thing is ridiculous and there is no truth in it at all. Social Inbox was launched in December and is just the first step in answering that fragmentation problem with Twitter, Flickr, AOL Mail and a recommendation tool. It was the first step and there’s more to come – there’s a lot of stuff to be layered over to build on that."

The spokesman claimed that the next phase of the integration will occur this month, with the third in February. Although Bebo is popular in the UK, with 10,5 million users, according to comScore figures, it only has 22.6 million users globally, and hasn’t managed to make a real impact in the US.