Following up to our post last week talking about a possible acquisition of social network site Bebo: A high level source has told us that Bebo has been in discussions via their investment bank, Allen & Co., with a number of potential buyers, and says that the company signed a term sheet on Monday to be acquired. The rumored price is $750 million – $1 billion. What’s clear is that Bebo, which is the second largest social network in the UK behind Facebook, either signed a deal, or is sending out false messages that they’ve been or are about to be acquired (which is unlikely given Allen & Co.’s involvement). If misinformation is the goal, we’ve bought it hook, line and sinker. The buyer is unclear, although we are still betting on Google given that Bebo fits well with Orkut (very, very small user overlap). Microsoft has been mentioned as another possible candidate, although they seem to have their hands full right now with Yahoo. Other potential buyers, including News Corp. (mentioned in our previous post), Yahoo and others, have backed out due to price, from what we’ve heard. There are other potential buyers as well (AOL, CBS, Viacom, Comcast, others). This is far from confirmed at this point, particularly the price, but this is about as strong a rumor as they come. CrunchBase Information Bebo Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
An unconfirmed rumor has surfaced that either Google or MySpace is about to announce a big $1 billion to $1.5 billion acquisition in the social space. After checking around with multiple industry sources, we’ve concluded that if the rumor is true the most likely candidate is Bebo, which we are told is raising capital and simultaneously shopping itself around again. We put the chances of this rumor being true at a solid 50 percent. Update: Make that a solid 51 percent. To be clear, there is a long history of rumors surrounding Bebo as an acquisition target that turned out to be false or never panned out. The last one was in May 2007, when Yahoo supposedly wanted to buy it for $1 billion. At a TechCrunch party last summer (before I was working here), Bebo CEO Michael Birch told me that the Yahoo bid was a complete fabrication and the first he heard of it was from his Dad, who called him up after reading about it. When I contacted Birch last night about this latest rumor, he had no comment. Let’s just go through the logic for each potential buyer, who might be bidding against each other. An acquisition of this size by Google in the face of Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo would show how swift Google can act while its competitors dither. It would also show that what it is really scared of is not a combined Microsoft-Yahoo, but the growing threat from fresh-faced upstart Facebook. Google already owns Orkut, one of the biggest social networks globally, especially in Latin America. It just has not caught on in the U.S. Bebo is also a global play, but its strength is in English-speaking countries such as the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. According to comScore, Bebo had 21 million unique visitors worldwide in December, 2007, with about 4 million in the U.S. Orkut had 25 million worldwide unique visitors. So Google would nearly double its social networking market share, as measured by active members. And it would have a strong English-speaking social network with which to begin to challenge Facebook here in the U.S. Bebo is already part of Google’s OpenSocial platform, even though it embraced Facebook’s competing platform also. You can bet that Bebo’s Facebook effort would get a bullet in the head pretty quickly if it became part of Google. Still, given Google’s recent earnings → Read More
Today’s agreement between MySpace and nearly all the states attorneys general to bulk up protections against sexual predators will no doubt have spillover effects on other social networks as well. No social network can afford to look like it is lagging in this area and will do whatever it can to be at par with emerging industry norms in this area. In fact, not long after I originally posted about the MySpace deal earlier today, I received the following statement from Facebook: Facebook has always created an inhospitable environment for predators by limiting access to users’ personal information based on real-world social connections. We have led the way in our partnership with the New York Attorney General and continue our involvement with the Attorneys General of all states and other law enforcement agencies to keep children safe from those who would do them harm. We are happy to work further with the states to develop and deploy strategies to protect kids online. I am pretty sure that not only Facebook, but also Bebo and Google, will do whatever is necessary to fight sexual predators. With that in mind, here specifically is where Facebook, Bebo and Orkut (i.e., Google) are now lagging MySpace in protections for younger users, and where they may have to spend money to catch up: Update: See clarifications/corrections from Facebook below in italics: 1. IMAGE AND VIDEO REVIEW MySpace proactively reviews videos and images for pornographic and sexually inappropriate content. Humans look at every image and banned images are digitally fingerprinted to prevent them from being uploaded again. Facebook and Bebo only ban inappropriate images and video that are reported by users. Orkut doesn’t even do that. Facebook has automated examination working on video, but they find that reports work extraordinarily well in removing inappropriate content quickly – for both images and video. They have always had report links, which MySpace was forced to add under this agreement. 2. GROUPS REVIEW MySpace monitors group discussions for predatory content. Facebook and Bebo regulate only reported incidents. Orkut does not review group discussions. Re: Groups, Facebook has algorithmic monitoring for inappropriate names/themes and a variety of technical tools that automatically cull them. 3. SEX OFFENDER DATABASE MySpace helped develop and fund a database of registered sex offenders and deletes the accounts of members who are registered sex ofenders. Facebook, Bebo, and Orkut do not have a policy of automatically → Read More
Almost a month ago to the day, social network Bebo announced its developer platform. Or rather, a clone of Facebook’s developer platform. The idea was to copy Facebook’s platform so that developers wouldn’t have to relearn a new one and rebuild their applications (Bebo’s platform still requires tweaks to port an application over from Facebook, however). Bebo chose to launch its platform with only 40 partners, leaving the rest of Facebook developer community baying at the gates. Today, the company announces the availability of its platform for all developers. Go here to browse a list of existing Bebo applications. And visit developer.bebo.com for more information on the platform. CrunchBase Information Bebo Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Video clips from local TV news affiliates are making their way onto the Web through a service called ClipSyndicate that’s been in beta for more than a year. The service, which is owned by New York City startup Critical Media, has more than 200,000 archived news clips and adds about 1,000 a day from about 200 local affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, along with video from Bloomberg TV, the AP, UPI, and the New York Times. About 350 niche Websites are participating in the beta—including Military.com, Construction.com, and PetHealthFocus.com—and they collectively serve up two million ClipSyndicate videos a month. Now ClipSyndicate is spreading its API to video search sites like AOL’s Truveo and other services like Magnify (which we reported earlier) and Lingospot. For instance, ClipSyndicate videos come up in regular video searches in Truveo and play in an embedded ClipSyndicate player. On this Magnify page for Barack Obama, the “Obama News” videos come from ClipSyndicate. And Lingospot, which creates an in-text search bubble when you mouse over a linked term (see left), can show ClipSyndicate videos in its bubbles. You can even find ClipSyndicate videos on Bebo, although you have to look hard and there is no official deal yet with the social networking site. To get a sense of the entertainment value of some of this stuff, here is a news clip from a local Oregon station about a man with blue skin who is moving to California in search of more tolerant neighbors: http://xml.truveo.com/eb/i/3421598497/a/4c86ff7dda1f7b769d520f50a4658f1d/p/1 Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com. ClipSyndicate serves ads with the videos and splits the proceeds as follows: 30 percent to the content producer (i.e., the local TV station), 20 percent to the API partner or Website where the video is seen, and 50 percent for itself. (Although the beta and APIs are available by invite only, the company plans to open up participation to all comers by the end of the first quarter). Critical Media CEO Sean Morgan tells me that he is getting $50 CPMs on the video ads sold through his salesforce compared to $8 to $12 CPMs from backfill video ad networks because the videos tend to appear on extremely targeted sites. Think Yummy Chummy ads on PetsHealthFocus. His sweet spots are mortgage, pets and animals, and health sites. He also claims that he is seeing close to three percent click-throughs on his graphical banner ads → Read More
When Google developed OpenSocial, it was intended to obviate the need for developers to reprogram the same social networking applications for separate platforms. Several social networks without their own proprietary developer platforms, including Bebo, quickly embraced OpenSocial as their opportunity to get in on some of the social-application action that Facebook monopolized with its pioneering platform. However, OpenSocial was late to the party since thousands of applications had already been developed for Facebook before Google’s solution was even announced, let alone implemented on any substantial number of social networks. (It is still not ready for prime time). Thus, it has become inevitable that developers who want to spread their extant applications beyond Facebook’s walls will need to redesign their applications for other social networks. Or has it? Not if Bebo, the (distant) third-largest social network in the United States, can help it. Today, Bebo is announcing the availability of a new platform called the “Open Application Platform”, but it’s not really a new platform. Rather, it’s like a clone of Facebook’s proprietary platform. The idea is to create a platform that matches the functionality and structure of Facebook’s platform so closely that it’s easy to deploy applications built for Facebook on Bebo, with little or no changes to the code. Bebo’s new platform accepts something called SNQL and SNML (as in, social networking query language and social networking markup language), each of which mirrors Facebook’s FQL and FBML, albeit with subtle differences. CEO Michael Birch says that it has been developing these parallel languages for about five months and in communication with Facebook itself, which has been assisting Bebo in its efforts to essentially adopt its platform. Bebo’s platform is up-to-speed with Facebook’s platform as it was six weeks ago, so it does not yet mirror Facebook’s platform perfectly (and Bebo will need to continually work on it in an effort to keep matching Facebook). However, Bebo says that even applications written in FQL and FBML themselves, instead of the adapted SNQL and SNML, should be able work on Bebo. We’ll just have to see how well this emulation works. While applications from about 40 launch partners will go live tonight on the “new” platform (with a total of 50 applications), the platform won’t be open to other developers until a couple of weeks or so from now. Bebo says that it picked its launch partners with an eye for → Read More
Bebo is taking on YouTube (and Hulu). Today, it opened up its social network to video partners who want access to its captive audience. Launch partners include CBS, MTV Networks, ESPN, the BBC, Channel Four, BSkyB—Bebo is very popular in the UK—Next New Networks, Crackle, Ustream, Last.fm and JibJab. The partners can keep all advertising dollars from the videos (and from music too). Bebo gets to keep its members on its site. (Update: In an e-mail, Bebo CEO Michael Birch clarifies how the ad relationship with the media partners works and what he is trying to accomplish: They control all advertising within the player itself, skins/pre-rolls/post-rolls/ads attached to the player in any way. There could be other advertising on the page controlled by us. What we’re trying to do here is simplify the whole relationship between media companies and distribution platforms. There’s value for Bebo and our users by having great quality, legal content on Bebo. And there is clear value to the content owner in both controlling the content and advertising, and in keeping the subsequent revenue. We’ve removed the need for protracted negotiations with third parties by opening our doors in such a way that it is a no-brainer for any media content owner, large or small. Also, in response to how Bebo positions itself versus YouTube or Hulu, he says: YouTube and Hulu are different to Bebo in that Bebo is a fully featured social network with a viral platform for distributing great content, which may indeed come from YouTube or Hulu. YouTube and Hulu have community type features but are not at the core a social network. The social network is where people are checking in daily, communicating with friends, and in the process sharing and discovering new content. For example, most new TV programs I watch are due to friend recommendations. Bebo simplifies and automates that discovery process.) Members will be able to create and share their own video and music playlists. And media companies will get their own profile pages. (Note that this announcement is separate from Bebo’s participation in Google’s OpenSocial platform). There is no doubt that media needs to go wherever the audience happens to be hanging out, and if it is not going to cost the media companies anything, why not sign up with Bebo? As for Bebo, maybe the free vids will help keep its growth from slowing down. Or → Read More
Employees generally don’t leave hot startups. They lose some or all of their stock options, and they also lose the resume value of being associated with a startup brand. And that’s doubly true for executive level employees. When an exec leaves a startup it isn’t necessarily news. But in the last couple of months we’ve seen two execs leave high profile second tier social networks – one from Piczo, and now one from Bebo. First to go was Jeanine LeFlore, Piczo’s VP of Products and Marketing. Both LeFlore and Piczo CEO Jeremy Verba tell me she left on good terms. She is now running her own startup, called LiveHit, which is months away from launching. This weekend we received a press release that Bebo’s co-founder and VP Business Development, Jim Scheinman, has left the company to become an entrepreneur in residence at Charles River Ventures. Scheinman was also one of the first employees at Friendster back in the day. Everyone mentioned above is a friend of mine, and yet I have a feeling I’ll never hear the whole story behind either departure. What I suspect, though, is that there may be a fear that the social networking space is heading for a shakeout. The big guys, which are roughly defined as MySpace, Facebook and (now) Orkut can manage their own destiny. The smaller players may see less riches ahead, and some execs may be looking for greener pastures elsewhere. Here’s worldwide Comscore for each (unique visitors): Photo Credit: Silicon Republic and Auren Hoffman. CrunchBase Information Piczo Bebo LiveHit Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Google may have just come out of nowhere and checkmated Facebook in the social networking power struggle. MySpace and Six Apart will announce that they are joining Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Silicon Alley Insider reported the MySpace rumor earlier today. We’ve confirmed that from an independent source, as well as the fact that Six Apart is joining. Per the update below, Google has also confirmed Bebo is joining. Google will be making an announcement today. MySpace and Six Apart join Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle as announced Google partners. No word on whether MySpace will continue with efforts to complete its own recently announced platform, but the answer is probably yes. They are likely to simply do both (Update: see below). Suddenly, within just the last couple of days, the entire social networking world has announced that they are ganging up to take on Facebook, and Google is their Quarterback in the big game. Update (12:30 PST): On a press call with Google now. This was embargoed for 5:30 pm PST but they’ve moved the time up to 12:30 PST (now). Press release will go out later this evening. My notes: On the call, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said “we’ve been working with MySpace for more than a year in secret on this” (likely corresponding to their advertising deal announced a year ago). MySpace says their new platform efforts will be entirely focused on OpenSocial. The press release names Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING as current OpenSocial partners. We’re seeing a Flixster application on MySpace now through the OpenSocial APIs. Flixster says it took them less than a day to create this. I’ll add screen shots below. Here’s the big question – Will Facebook now be forced to join OpenSocial? Google says they are talking to “everyone.” This is a major strategic decision for Facebook, and they may have little choice but to join this coalition. Bebo has also joined OpenSocial. Flixster/MySpace screen shots: CrunchBase Information MySpace Six Apart Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Did you know that Imeem is the fastest-growing social site in the U.S (up 1,590 percent in monthly uniques). And that AIM Pages is growing slightly faster than Digg (345 percent growth versus 323 percent)? Well, at least according to comScore. I asked comScore to do a ranking of social sites in the U.S. and then I reordered the list by growth rate. Here it is: Here are my takeaways. MySpace is still growing at a healthy 23 percent, despite its size. But Facebook is coming on fast, with 129 percent growth. Notice also the strong showing by Bebo (growing 83 percent) versus the lackluster U.S. growth of Hi5 (3 percent) and the decline of Xanga (negative 55 percent). In blogging platforms, Blogger is beating Six Apart on both absolute numbers (32 million visitors versus 13 million) and growth (55 percent versus 44 percent). In the doldrums territory, you’ve got Windows Live Spaces (with a one percent decline) and Yahoo Groups (four percent decline). And in the you-ought-to-seriously-think-of-shutting-this-down territory, there is Lycos Tripod (23 percent decline), MSN Groups (36 percent decline), and Yahoo 360 (’nuff said). Here is a more comprehensive list of social sites ranked by total number of visitors. It includes sites where comScore could not calculate a growth rate because it did not have enough data for September, 2006. Some sites that stand out on this list, having come out of nowhere in the past year, include WordPress.com (with 11.9 million monthly visitors), Freewebs (with 6.6 million), BuzzNet (with 4.4 million),and Kaboodle (with 2.5 million). (Update: Also, you will notice that Google’s social networking site Orkut isn’t even on the list. That is because while it had 24.6 million visitors worldwide in September, 2007, Orkut only attracted 503,000 visitors in the U.S.). CrunchBase Information Imeem Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
AllFacebook is running a rumor that Facebook is prepping an online music store that will see it compete with Apple’s dominant iTunes. A competing story by PaidContent says the new product is to be a music platform for artists and will compete directly with MySpace, not iTunes. According to the posts, Facebook has been searching for someone tolead the new division and has been pursuing agreements with a number of record labels. This is bad news for the the new iLike artist platform on Facebook, which launched today. But as we’ve said before, if you play in Facebook’s sandbox, don’t be upset when Facebook wants to play there, too. → Read More
Good news for Yahoo, which until now didn’t have an advertising deal with any of the big social networks. They just announced that they will handle advertising for the UK and Ireland sites of Bebo, one of the large social networks (articles here and here). The deal will see Yahoo selling the majority of display and video advertising to an audience of 11.6 million members. Yahoo was previously rumored to be in talks to acquire Bebo for $1 billion in May. This at least gets them in the game. Last year Google snatched up Myspace advertising with a nearly $1 billion deal. Facebook went with Microsoft, and then Friendster announced a multi year deal with Google earlier this year. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Google guaranteed revenues to Fox, MySpace’s parent company, pursuant to their deal. And Microsoft was largely rumored to have done the same to win Facebook’s business. More coverage at TechCrunch UK → Read More
Bebo has announced a new partnership with Microsoft that will see the introduction of the Windows Live instant messaging service to Bebo’s social network. The new service will allow Bebo users to chat to people outside of the Bebo network, from within Bebo itself. What makes the deal perhaps more interesting is that Bebo users will also now be recognized over the Windows Live platform; in effect the deal becomes a sort of merging of member databases. It’s also a first for Microsoft, who has remained somewhat distant from the growing social networking market to date. Bebo continues to trail behind MySpace and Facebook in the United States in terms of traffic, but as confirmed by comScore August 15, is the most popular social networking site in the United Kingdom. (via Reuters) → Read More
Apple has announced a deal that will see the its popular iTunes service embedded into Bebo. According to FT.com, Bebo’s 8.8m users in the UK and Ireland will be able to buy music directly from the profile of any musician who has a Bebo profile and whose music is available on iTunes. The deal is a first for Apple. Bebo is a market leader in social networking in the United Kingdom despite not taking off to the same extent elsewhere. It may not seem like major news, but to put it in perspective it’s on half hour leading story rotation on BBC World as I write this. It may also be indicative of a new direction for Apple; the wildly popular Facebook F8 is delivering benefits to many music related sites. To date Apple has remained silent in regards to its position on embracing the growing trend of social networking site integration. → Read More
See our earlier post on possible acquisition talks between Yahoo and Bebo for $1 billion or so. The original report for the story comes from the UK’s Telegraph, based on a very weak source – “silicon valley gossip.” Still, we though it was worth a look at the most recent data to see if Bebo really could pull off a $1 billion or more sale. We’ve pulled worldwide Comscore stats for MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. The most recent data (March) shows MySpace with 107 million unique monthly visitors. Facebook had 32 million and Bebo had 13.7 million. Bebo users tend to spend a lot of time on the site – on average they view just over 20 pages per day each, about equal to Facebook and a bit more than MySpace.. According to Comscore, Bebo today is about as big as Facebook was in May 06. Based on fairly aggresive growth estimates, Yahoo valued Facebook for as much as $1.6 billion at that time or a little later. If Bebo sold for $1 billion today, the buyer would be paying around $73/unique visitor, which is certainly in the range of acceptable. Both Facebook and MySpace are growing faster than Bebo is today. But neither of those properties are available to Yahoo, so perhaps they are dipping down a little deeper into the social networking well. Here’s the Comscore comparison chart for the three companies, based on worldwide data: → Read More
Update: Recent Comscore traffic data for Bebo, MySpace and Facebook is here. Rumors about social networking site Bebo being for sale come up every few months. First it was British Telecom for $550 million in July 2006 (we started that one), then the Financial Times reported they were in talks with Viacom a month later. Now, The UK’s Telegraph is reporting that Yahoo is looking, and may pay as much as $1 billion. Just one problem, though. The Telegraph isn’t exactly known for breaking tech M&A stories, and the rumor has an exceptionally weak source – “according to silicon valley gossip” the article says. That sounds like something the Telegraph’s correspondent overheard after ten or twelve cocktails last night at a party. And while I don’t doubt that Yahoo is sniffing around Bebo, $1 billion seems a tad high for the service. Yahoo would have bid as high as $1.6 billion for Facebook last year according to leaked documents. But Bebo, while large and growing, is far smaller than Facebook. And it’s also smaller than Hi5, Orkut, Friendster and Tagged, according to Comscore. On the plus side, Bebo does claim 25 million users, about a quarter of what MySpace has today. And they are very strong in the UK. Sometime last year I stopped becoming incredulous as the size of some of these acquisitions – If it takes $65 million to buy a Grouper, then maybe Bebo really is worth $1 billion. I have emails in to Bebo and Yahoo for comment. → Read More
San Francisco based Piczo is having a media coming-out party today, with announcements on the current state of the service and key statistics. A few weeks ago CEO Jeremy Verba did the same thing in the UK – which we covered on TechCrunch UK. Piczo is adding 35,000 new member registrations per day, 75% of which are teenagers between 13 and 16 years old. Ten million unique visitors come to Piczo sites monthly, adding up to 2.5 billion page views. While this isn’t much compared to monster competitor MySpace (which serves over 1 billion pages per day), it shows what the power of the network effect can do when applied properly – Piczo hasn’t spent a dime on marketing. And unlike Myspace, Piczo is focused on safety first. It is virtually impossible to browse user pages on Piczo. There is no search or browse feature. Users must share their page URL with others for it to be found, and there are numerous ways for users, parents and others to report inappropriate behavior. Piczo has full time staff reviewing all complaints and takes swift action to protect its members. Piczo was founded in early 2004 as a paid service. Based on early user feedback it was relaunched as a free service, and founder Jim Conning sent out 100 emails to Canadian teenagers announcing the new site. That is where Piczo’s marketing efforts began and, until now, ended. The result of those 100 emails has been a massive viral spread of the product. Piczo brought in a high powered CEO late last year, Jeremy Verba. Verba was previously GM and Vice President of AOL’s Voice Services division, which he grew to over a million subscribers. In addition, he was co-founder and president of E!Online, a joint venture of CNET and E!Entertainment Television, now a part of Comcast. Piczo is well funded after pocketing a total of US$7 million over two rounds of financing from Sierra Ventures and Catamount in 2005 and 2006. The Social Networking Space I thought this was a good opportunity to look up Comscore numbers on the largest social networking players and see how things are evolving (these are U.S. numbers only). MySpace is still the king, with over a billion page views per day, 100 million registered users and 56 million unique visitors per month. If anything, their lead is growing over competitors. But that doesn’t mean there → Read More
Lots of news on Bebo today, which just surpassed Myspace in UK traffic. The Financial Times is reporting that the company is in acquisition talks with Viacom, the owner of MTV and other cable stations. This is the third try for Viacom, which lost out when bidding for both Myspace and Facebook (with Facebook reportedly shunning an offer of at least $750 million). Bebo seems to be on a roadshow of sorts through the UK, meeting with potential partners and suitors. Founder Michael Birch told the Financial Times that “he was in no hurry to sell – his company was still growing rapidly”. He also mentioned, however, that the previous rumor about BT offering £300 million for Bebo sparked a ton of interest in the company. Michael, or his VCs, still seems to think that £300 million is way too low and are holding out for more. When asked about a sale, he said “If I sell it, I’d have to start from scratch.” Translation: “Give me a billion dollars please.” → Read More
Hitwise is reporting that online social network Bebo passed MySpace for the first time last week in number of weekly visits in the UK. MySpace retains its lead in the US, but the new UK numbers show that the Fox super-site is beatable in particular countries. MySpace is planning to roll out localized versions in several European countries this summer. Hitwise analyst Heather Hopkins attributes the Bebo jump to the launch of the site’s new music section. Hopkins reports that according to Hitwise numbers, Bebo is now the 11th most visited site on the internet world wide. Last month that Bebo was at more than 25 million registered users and 3 billion monthly page views. MySpace, for comparison, has 70+ million users and nearly 30 billion monthly page views. The company raised $15 million in a round led by Benchmark Capital this May. The company is based in San Francisco but has long been known to be a major player in the UK in particular. According to Hitwise, Bebo is also the #1 online social network in New Zealand. Clearly there are huge ammounts of money to be made around succesful social networks, yesterday’s one billion dollar deal between Fox and Google being a prime example. Update: The Financial Times is reporting this morning that Viacom is considering a move to purchase Bebo. Talks are reported to be in very early stages. → Read More
San Francisco based social network Bebo, which recently raised $15 million from Benchmark Capital, rejected a £300 million ($552 million) acquisition offer from British Telecom Group “a few weeks ago”, according to an insider on the transaction. Bebo’s asking price? North of $1 billion. A Benchmark representative wouldn’t comment on whether or not the rumor was accurate, but did stay on the phone with me long enough to say that “there has been a lot of interest from a lot of people around Bebo”. Bebo has been on fire recently, and now has more than 25 million registered users and 3 billion monthly page views. Myspace, for comparison, has 70+ million users and nearly 30 billion monthly page views. The success of Myspace (controlled by Fox Interactive Media) has led to a series of buyout offers on its competitors. Facebook was rumored to have turned down offers nearing $1 billion from Viacom and Yahoo. It looks like Kleiner’s recapitalization of troubled Friendster late last year for a few million dollars may have been a good bet. → Read More
