It’s hardly an original idea: Natter has launched as yet-another-attempt to create a “safe’ Chatroulette-style video chat site.
Just like Andrey Ternovskiy‘s creation, the site lets strangers find each other via webcam, only this time – and similar to vChatter, which also powers social network Bebo’s own take on the idea – users have to log-in via Facebook, therefore insisting on a certain amount… → Read More
It’s not quite on the level of Steve Jobs returning to Apple, but every time a founder comes home it leaves me feeling all warm and fuzzy. This time it’s the turn of Michael Birch who has re-joined Bebo as a strategic advisor, along with investing in the social network which he co-founded with his wife Xochi in early 2005 before selling the company to AOL in 2008 for $850 million.
Since then, of… → Read More
It’s not quite on the level of Steve Jobs returning to Apple, but every time a founder comes home it leaves me feeling all warm and fuzzy. This time it’s the turn of Michael Birch who has re-joined Bebo as a strategic advisor, along with investing in the social network which he co-founded with his wife Xochi in early 2005 before selling the company to AOL in 2008 for $850 million.
Since then, of… → Read More
Following on from the recent addition of IM powered by Meebo’s web-based client, Bebo has rolled out a video chat feature called bChat. Think Chatroulette “sans-private parts” was the line given to me (phew!). It’s provided by Vchatter, the social video chat service that is already available on Facebook and as a standalone offering, and is part of a wider strategy by Bebo to become relevant… → Read More
Following on from the recent addition of IM powered by Meebo’s web-based client, Bebo has rolled out a video chat feature called bChat. Think Chatroulette “sans-private parts” was the line given to me (phew!). It’s provided by Vchatter, the social video chat service that is already available on Facebook and as a standalone offering, and is part of a wider strategy by Bebo to become relevant… → Read More
Bebo just launched Meebo’s web-based instant messaging client across the social network and the company says a million messages have been sent already
This is Bebo’s first step towards a much more real-time, interactive platform since they sold to AOL for $850 million in 2008. Right after that AOL let the platform languish, eventually shutting it down for tax purposes and selling it for about… → Read More
Bebo is like a bad case of herpes – it just keeps coming back. They sold to AOL for $850 million in 2008. Then AOL, under new management, sort of just shut it down for tax purposes, selling it for next to nothing to Criterion Capital Partners. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong called the whole thing a huge distraction.
But if you think you’ve seen the last of Bebo, you’re wrong. A whole new team is in… → Read More
The rumors are true: hedge fund Criterion Capital Partners is indeed the buyer of Bebo. As we reported yesterday, AOL is offloading the social networking service for less than $10 million (other media are reporting a purchase price of around $2.5 million).
To remind you: AOL paid $850 million for Bebo back in 2008. Ouch indeed.
In a press release that just went out, Criterion acknowledges that… → Read More
AOL is close to selling Bebo to an investor group, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the company. The price? $10 million or less. Rumors of the acquisition first surfaced this morning, and the buyer may be Criterion Capital Partners.
That’s just a bit less than the $850 million AOL paid for the social network in 2008. And as decimated as Bebo is, it’s almost certainly worth more than $10… → Read More
Hitwise, the web analytics firm, has a report out today that claims that social networks now receive more UK Internet visits than search engines.
Which, if the case, would imply that Google should be considerably worried about its future battle with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, as online marketing spend will surely follow Internet foot-through. Or does it?
According to Hitwise, during May… → Read More
Straight from the horse’s mouth: AOL CEO Tim Armstrong just told the TechCrunch Disrupt audience what most industry watchers already knew: the company made a strategic mistake in acquiring social network Bebo, and it ended up being a “major distraction” for them.
Armstrong admitted that it would have been very hard to make Bebo work right out the gate no matter what, and that probably the deal … → Read More
Michael Birch, who co-founded social network Bebo along with his wife Xochi Birch, has invested an undisclosed amount in social media agency Punktilio. He’ll also become an adviser to the company.
Punktilio, whose clients include Arsenal F.C, Harper Collins, Phones 4u and Simon Cowell’s SyCo Music label, was founded by ex-Bebo Head of Music, Hal Stokes, so there’s an existing relationship… → Read More
AOL needs to offload Bebo fast. And tax experts say that the best financial result for AOL may be to simply abandon Bebo rather than sell it. All of that makes for a rather awkward situation with Bebo partners.
How do you handle that awkwardness? Send out a mass email to all open media partners to explain the situation: → Read More
AOL has long regretted its $850 million purchase of social network Bebo, and ever since CEO Tim Armstrong came on board it’s pretty much been left to die on the vine. AOL is preparing a filing in the UK to alert regulators there of its plans to either sell or shut down the site. While a sale seems like the logical way to go, Bebo is pretty much worthless now and for tax reasons it might make… → Read More
Facebook has been famously thin in terms of its international organisation. Visiting their London offices recently impressed upon me how few people they actually have in Europe. A few sales staff, a PR, receptionist etc. As far as I could tell, only the affable Christian Hernandez was doing anything in wider Europe, as Facebook’s international biz dev guy. So it’s not before time that it’s… → Read More
Newly independent Aol is still struggling with the fate of Bebo, the social network they acquired for $850 million in 2008.
No one argues that Aol underpaid for Bebo. And the social network has fallen from 22 million monthly unique visitors when it was acquired to just 14.6 million today (Comscore worldwide). But even so, Bebo clearly has some value on the open market.
Despite that value, Aol’s… → Read More
Amid rapid growth, Foursquare has hired someone to help ease the load. Evan Cohen, Bebo’s former director of strategy and operations has been hired as Foursquare’s General Manager, we’ve confirmed with co-founder Dennis Crowley.
If the title sounds a bit odd, it’s because Foursquare is avoiding having executive-sounding positions, Crowley says. But Cohen’s role will be vital for the startup as… → Read More
[UK] GigJunkie, a site that helps UK music fans discover gigs and purchase concert tickets, has announced a partnership with AOL-owned Bebo.
The new collaboration sees the launch of the ‘Tour Dates‘ application, which enables British Bebo users to get a heads-up of when their favourite bands are playing nearby and of course purchase tickets. It does this by looking at the artists listed in a… → Read More
For all the billions of dollars created here, Silicon Valley is remarkably stingy when it comes to giving. I first wrote about this when I moved here in the great Web 1.0 Internet bubble. Back then, as companies went public all around us, one-third of households earning $100,000 or more gave $1,000 or less to charity—roughly half what the rest of the U.S. gave per dollar earned. And those were… → Read More
Interesting off hand comment by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong at the Fortune event this morning. Bebo, the social network AOL paid $850 million for in 2008, wasn’t mentioned on the list of AOL’s core product goals going forward. Late in the interview, though, Armstrong was asked where Bebo fits into that strategy. His answer, roughly quoted “Bebo may be better off under AOL Ventures, with it’s own… → Read More
“The good news is, the world is still turning,” said Nic Brisbourne at the Glasshouse‘s “Show Me The Money” event in London last night. “Investment continues, though levels are obviously lower.” Nic quoted £114m garnered from VC funding in Q1 in the UK. “It’s down, but it hasn’t stopped.” Alongside Nic, who’s a partner at DFJ… → Read More
Last week, Facebook took a $200 million investment that valued the company at $10 billion. So if Facebook is worth $10 billion, how much is Twitter worth? After all, Twitter turned down $500 million from Facebook late last year, and founder Evan Williams might not even sell it for $1 billion. But how about for $1.7 billion?
That is the valuation we come up with when we run Twitter’s numbers… → Read More
A year ago we modeled out the true value of various social networks based on the idea that users in high-value online advertising markets like Japan, the UK and the U.S. were worth more (financially speaking) than those in lower value online advertising markets. Facebook had recently become the largest worldwide social network in terms of users, but based on our model MySpace was still by far the… → Read More
Social networking site Bebo has made the leap into Europe, teaming with local media partners to gain a foothold in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands — markets in which Facebook, MySpace and Netlog are already active players. AOL’s People Networks division announced yesterday that the site will use IP-based geo-targetting to provide services in the user’s first… → Read More
AOL’s People Networks division has today announced the launch of social networking site Bebo, which it acquired almost exactly one year ago, in several key European countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.
Before, Bebo was only available in English and for some reason also Polish, but now it will use IP-based geo-targetting to cater services in users’ mother tongues. → Read More
Social timelines are going mainstream (see AOL/Bebo), but startups are pushing them to the next level. Today, Lifeblob, the Indian startup working on ways for you to visualize your life on the net, is introducing a refreshed version of its social timeline creation tool. With it, you can easily patch together a visual representation of your life’s most memorable moments by timestamping certain… → Read More
In the first of several major product changes that will sweep through AOL in the coming months, the company is adding more lifestreaming capabilities to its Bebo social network today, including activity stream updates from rival social networks Facebook and MySpace. It is also introducing a visual timeline called a “Lifestory” that puts uploaded photos, events, and (soon) videos into a… → Read More
At the beginning of last December, Ning reversed course on its anything-legal-goes policy by declaring a prohibition on adult social networks. The reason? Porn wasn’t paying the bills; instead of attracting advertisers, it was scaring them away. Legal adult content was also begetting illegal content, which drew the ire of both authorities and lawyers with DMCA notices in hand.
Given the report… → Read More
ShopIt, a social commerce platform that enables people to set up an online store and sell goods through a variety of social networking services, has finished integrating its recently acquired Triana Global publisher network and relaunching it as ShopIt Media, another social advertising platform.
Like many others, Triana Global claims to have been one of the first ad networks that started… → Read More
As part of Time Warner’s $24 billion writedown of goodwill that it detailed in this morning’s fourth quarter earnings announcement, AOL accounted for $2.2 billion. That charge swung the business from a $2.0 billion operating profit last year to a $1.1 billion operating loss in the quarter.
The charge was related to reducing the “carrying value of goodwill,” which is what companies do when when… → Read More
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