AOL to buy Bebo
A lot of readers from the USA may be thinking: “What’s Bebo?”. Well, apparently, Bebo wasn’t ever that successful in the USA - instead, MySpace and Facebook took the lead. For those who don’t know what it is, it’s a social network just like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and all the rest. It’s been a huge hit in the UK, and most people I know have used it before and have an account.
I personally found Bebo a much better experience than MySpace; however, when I came across Facebook, it became my new favourite social network. At the time I found Facebook, it didn’t even support UK networks. But it was Facebook’s simple and intuitive interface that kept me coming back to the site.
If I were to guess, I’d say Bebo is about even with Facebook for UK users at the moment. According to the Telegraph, they are actually the UK’s second most popular social-networking website.
I think it’s a smart move for AOL to buy Bebo for $850 million, from both Bebo and AOL’s perspective. Bebo has been starting to struggle in the past few months, because of Facebook’s domination of the market - although Bebo is still a strong presence in the social-networking world. AOL is an internet giant that is now struggling to compete against new Web 2.0 start-ups. Bebo could be the key to getting AOL back on track; and AOL could be the key to bringing new, exciting features to Bebo.