Comments on: Smelling Trouble Behind AOL’s $850 Million Bebo Deal

By: Dijital Pazar Blog )) Web 2.0, Startups, Internet Marketing by Serkan Sevilgen » AOL, Bebo.com’u $850M’a satın aldı.

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:01:02 +0000

[…] ne kadar heyecan yaratan bir alım olsa da bu alımın AOL için çok da hayırlı olmayacağını düşünenler var. Bebo’nun yatay seyire girmesi, AOL Amerika dışında çok zayıfken Bebo’nun […]

By: Interesting Deals for the Week « Research Labs.

Interesting Deals for the Week « Research Labs. — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:25:24 +0000

[…] Interesting Deals for the Week AOL pays $850m for social network Bebo. But was it too much? […]

By: Lesezeichen vom 21.03.2008 - PolkaRobot

Lesezeichen vom 21.03.2008 - PolkaRobot — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:24:25 +0000

[…] Smelling Trouble Behind AOL’s $850 Million Bebo Deal The concerns of the senior executives who actually run AOL (and reportedly were not consulted on the top-secret acquisition) include: the general difficulty of making money placing ads on social networks (see Google’s missed quarter), “flattening traf […]

By: Arona

Arona — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:06:54 +0000

Do you any of you know how Bebo got started by the way?

Google “Bebo Virus” and do your research!))

Also - my comments - AOL taking a big risk. 850 is too much and if they don’t monetize the billions of pages of content (and where the hell are they going to get their advertising “content” from to do this) then they fail - as a company - period.

The bottom line is this - people on a social network do not click on traditional advertising and never will. NO social network that relies on advertising is going to make money. It is a traffic hub, pure and simple.

P.S. gotta love the AOL men in suits….er….WRONG INDUSTRY PEOPLE!!!

By: Tlandra

Tlandra — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:00:32 +0000

i dont understand why if somebody cancel there bebo page you cant cancel your qwn e-mail address off of bebo.com????????????????????????????????????

By: chrisco

chrisco — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:47:37 +0000

Oops, “MySpace, McDonalds, and now Bebo” (above #23) is supposed to read “MySpace, Facebook, and now Bebo.” Excuse the slip

By: chrisco

chrisco — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:46:03 +0000

Look at those corporate suit dudes. Another social network goes to “big media.” I guess there’s nothing wrong with it, it just seems funny. I don’t particularly see how “cool” and “corporate” are the same thing. In fact, “corporate” kills “cool” the way rock kills scisors in a game of rock, paper, scisors. But maybe social networks don’t need to be “cool.”

I think all these corporate deals are good for independent social networks, though. The leading edge trendsetters prefer unique and different. NewsCorp + MySpace, Microsoft + Facebook, Bebo + AOL. These are all “cool killers.”

MySpace, McDonalds, and now Bebo are all becoming one big boring corporate mass-market consumer product. The P&G, Pepsi, and McDonalds of online.

They are set on one thing, which is figuring out all the ways they can monetize and market to the poor souls on their networks, who have their privacy walked all over so every ounce of their personalities can be turned into another niche marketing message to sell them another consumer product or service they don’t need.

Oops, that turned into a a rant

By: Erick Schonfeld

Erick Schonfeld — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:08:12 +0000

Clem, it’s called a conversation. Do you not see the link and attribution to Silicon Alley Insider? Learn how to read.

By: jonathan.bonzy.tv : le blog de Jonathan Bonzy

jonathan.bonzy.tv : le blog de Jonathan Bonzy — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:03:30 +0000

AOL aurait surestimé sa capacité à monétiser Bebo…

AOL aurait manqué de discernement lors du rachat du réseau social Bebo en surestimant sa capacité à monétiser cette plateforme pour rentrer dans ses frais. Bebo a ainsi été valorisé plus de 40 fois son chiffre d’affaires avec un utilisateur …

By: jenkins

jenkins — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:56:23 +0000

Is this deal at risk of not closing?

By: Jason Jenkins

Jason Jenkins — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:51:46 +0000

JACK
PROPRIETARY CONTENT! SOMETHING THEY CONTROL AND DISTRIBUTE!! NOT SOMETHING THEY LICENSE…

By: Clem Freed

Clem Freed — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:18:47 +0000

Nice one, Erick. You ripped this off from SiliconAlleyInsider. Bad form, dude

By: Jack

Jack — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:16:29 +0000

Jason Jenkins:

Bebo does have “content”… KateModern and other shows in production.

Big following, check into it if interested.

By: alan p

alan p — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:44:53 +0000

Pretty obvious really, we predicted it last week:

http://broadstuff.com/archives.....ation.html

Santayana moments…..

By: Jon Wu

Jon Wu — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:44:07 +0000

Well, the outcome was great for the Birches and Beebo employees. And honestly, that is all that matters.

Major props and respect to them for pulling this off!

Whether AOL got a good deal — who cares, it’s just a lame old company on the way out

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:42:00 +0000

It seems that AOL got a better deal with Bebo than Microsoft did with Facebook. It might be comparable to the deal with News Corp and MySpace. At least on acquisition price per user. Now it’s upto AOL to execute correctly to make this profitable, but that is a BIG if: http://fishtrain.com/2008/03/1.....valuation/

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:29:15 +0000

“The formula for its business is pretty simple: Unique visitors X page views = advertising inventory.”

Really Erick? I would’ve thought a Techcrunch writer would have not be so naive. If anything, social networks have shown us how over-rated the page view stat is.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:22:19 +0000

bubble,bubble,bubble

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:19:24 +0000

Someone needs to educate AOL UK Networks since it move ISP Backbone Network in Europe, Broadband keeps crashing more than running and over loaded at evenings and weekends with school children using the network the most during these hours. AOL network based at Ammanford Telephone exchange has been the investigation of more users reporting major outages than the rest of the UK.

AOL Helpdesk in India was unable or unwilling to comment that the new IP address is under-funded and incapable of supporting all their customers throughout the UK and mainland Europe. The Bebo deal is just another failed project of AOL, as is their New European network.

By: Morgan

Morgan — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:08:26 +0000

Calling BS– that’s Fred Willard on the left.

By: friends

friends — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:06:14 +0000

Hi5 is not valuable to ecommerce players…their customers are not attractive; traffic means little, quality means alot.
bebo only makes sense if aol is selling its UK operations to a telco there! i hear thats under discussion…

By: Spanky

Spanky — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:02:39 +0000

Wow, Grant is a midget.

By: JB

JB — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:02:11 +0000

The “growth” comparison is weak at best since Bebo’s flat traffic is significantly more valuable than the third world supported Hi5 and Friendster traffic.

From Alexa (not always the most accurate, but not a bad barometer):

Hi5.com users come from these countries:
Peru - 12.7%
Thailand - 10.8%
Mexico - 8.0%
Dominican Republic - 6.5%
Colombia - 6.2%

Friendster.com users come from these countries:
Philippines - 34.4%
Malaysia - 18.8%
Indonesia - 16.7%
Singapore - 13.6%
United States - 3.6%

Bebo.com users come from these countries:
United Kingdom - 39.0%
United States - 11.4%
Ireland - 8.2%
Australia - 6.5%
New Zealand - 5.6%

By: Jason Jenkins

Jason Jenkins — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:00:38 +0000

Somebody needs to develop a system to track “quality” page views versus simply “quantity”. I laugh out loud when here numbers like 10 billion page views. Most of those pages views are coming from users simply checking their profiles or adding content…NOT CLICKING ON ADS! Advertisers will start to look at placing ads within video content to ensure their getting the most bang for their buck. Also, why would any company pay this amount to acquire another company THAT DOES NOT EVEN OWN THEIR OWN CONTENT! Social networks are risky in my opinion considering the users control the site. If all users decided to migrate elsewhere there would be no more BEBO, YouTube, Myspace, ect.. Just ask DIGG how the users can call the shots. Content will always be KING!

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:44:01 +0000

AOL has no problem with the domestic advertising reach — in fact, they reach something like 90 something percent of US internet users.

Where AOL needs to improve is internationally. Bebo has a strong european presence and gives AOL extended reach beyond their US borders.

It’s not just about the traffic - its about where that traffic comes from.