America Online announced today that it has made a deal to purchase social networking site Bebo for $850 million. Bebo, which generally comes in third to MySpace and Facebook in social network rankings but is rather popular in Europe, has 40 million members worldwide.
“Bebo is the perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media,” said Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO, AOL. “What drew us to Bebo was its substantial and fast-growing worldwide user-base, its vision of a truly social web, and the monetization opportunities that leverage Platform-A across our combined global audience. This positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.”
