News Corporation, owner of Myspace, already told that they were not in the race for any soecial media company either it is Yahoo! or Bebo.

It is not a luxury thing: as the article mentioned Google would show up its potential by acquiring Bebo, while its campetetor Microsoft is acquiring Yahoo!. It is a business, they need look for the synergies that they are getting through the deal. Instead of Bebo, Google can put the money ($1 billion - $1.5 billion) for one more technology revolution.

So I sum up as,

If Bebo is the takeover target, acquirer would be some other company not the above both.

The point of saying there is a 50 percent chance of this being true is to try to communicate our confidence in the rumor. That is, we are not as confident as we normally are about these things, but feel it is more likely than not to be true. For that reason, we’ve updated the chance of the rumor being true to 51 percent.

But don’t get stuck on the number.

Google would likely do well with something like imeem or Bebo for a higher-value US presence (imeem). I echo Erick’s description of the value of bebo

MySpace would do well with something like Hi5 as Hi5 beats Orkut in most Latam countries.

Bebo is looking for financing at a $1bn+ valuation with Google and News Corp as potential investors. It is not up for sale.

Bebo is a pure UK socnet. Users are 13-25. Its not a small site, but 1 billion is way off the mark)))))

1. Solid Yes
2. Solid No

b.
I can understand why MySpace would like to buy bebo - gives them better starting point in the future battle of social networks , which will start eventually when the Google open social will have critical mass.

c.
Regarding google we must remember 2 things:
1. getting more pageviews results in more text ads which results in more money in the bank - once google finds a good way to syndicate it’s adsense into the social networks environment.
2.
Google’s open social prepares the ground for google to launch some sort of googlish social network - making google not just the entry point to the web.

Erick knows the Bebo guy, got a reaction from him once about a rumor and now got an opposite reaction from him about a parallel rumor. He’s writing an interesting article about his gut reaction on a rumor.

It’s a BLOG, people. If you want news, stick to a news site. If Bebo is acquired by Google, you can be sure CNN will have a byline about it after the paperwork is filed. Sounds like fun.