It was revealed last Thursday that AOL will be buying the social network site Bebo for $850 million. Although not as popular as MySpace or Facebook, it is the third social networking site in the United States. My main concern with this piece of news is whether Bebo, with this acquisition, will be able to overcome both MySpace and Facebook in popularity and whether this will improve the success of the once successful AOL.
One way in which the Internet Service Provider wishes to boost its revenue is by incorporating Bebo with its instant-messaging service. If AOL is able to effectively merge these two applications together, we may see AOL as one of the key actors in internet portals.
One of the main objectives, as mentioned on a podcast for CNET News.com, that AOL will need to do in order to “save” their company is advertising. At present, Bebo has over 40 million users, but the majority of users are from the UK and Ireland. If AOL wishes Bebo to be popular in the US, it must advertise this unique website, which combines both the customization aspects of Myspace with the deeper social aspects of Facebook.
One thing that AOL must be careful of is not to change the essence of Bebo too much so as to alter the overall experience the user may encounter. Often large companies have the tendency of dramatically altering websites on acquiring in the hope of enticing new members and therefore generating more money. AOL must remember that if they were to alter the website in any way, they may exclude their existing audience thereby in turn actually losing money.
Only time will tell how this acquisition not only Bebo, but AOL and even the social networking world itself, but if there ever was a time the AOL needed to do something drastic, now is it.
