AOL Sold Bebo and Here’s The Full Story

It was reported by various technology news sites that AOL had finally cut its losses and sold Bebo. AOL purchased Bebo a few years ago for $850 million. At that point Bebo was one of the main players in social network with Myspace and Facebook. Since acquiring Bebo, AOL hasnt really innovated the platform, thus the community has gone where the innovation is and thats Facebook.

AOL had two choices with Bebo, they could either sell Bebo (cause they cant afford to run it), or they could simply just close it down. Bebo doesnt fit in AOL’s new content strategy that they seem to be pursuing.

Silicon Alley Insider saw a tweet (which has since mysteriously disappeared) from a Wall Street Journal staffer with the details.  Bebo will be sold to Criterion Capital, for an as-yet-undisclosed sum.  However, SAI reports that Criterion Capital only manages 1 billion in funding, and so the price must be considerably lower than what AOL first paid.

TechCrunch then stated that a “source close to the company” is claiming a selling price of $10 million.  Though that’s considerably less than the original purchase, the article goes on to describe how the sale could be written off as a loss for AOL.

This is a good out for the current AOL team, because they received $10 million for a product I think is worth nothing. However, the old AOL team that purchase Bebo and then left it to die shouldnt be taken seriously in this space again!