Is Bebo Worth $1 billion?

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: