New York - Time Warner's AOL is buying the social networking site Bebo for 850 million dollars, the world's largest media conglomerate said Thursday. The move for the popular social site will give the company a "premier position" in the hot online segment currently dominated by News Corp's MySpace and the independently-owned Facebook.
Bebo has approximately 40 million members, and the cash deal will allow AOL to combine it with its AIM and ICQ personal communications network for a total of 80 million unique users, AOL said.
Bebo has 22 million users in the US, but is considered among the leading social networking sites in Europe.
The price tag is tiny compared to the leading social networking sites. News Corp paid just 580 million dollars for MySpace in 2006. Both MySpace and Facebook are currently valued at around 15 billion dollars.
Bebo
