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Bebo founders and VC backers sing Be-bop-a-lula

Michael and Xochi Birch made an estimated US$600 million (£295 million) yesterday after the sale of their 70% stake in Bebo, the social networking site, to the AOL division of Time Warner for US$850 million (A$898 million) in cash. ... News Corporation, the parent company of The Times, acquired MySpace for US$580 million in 2005, when it had slightly more than 25 million monthly users. Bebo [claims it] has 40 million users.* Facebook [currently with 60+ million subscribers] is thought to have generated US$100 million in [advertsing] revenues in 2007, which is likely to represent a benchmark for Bebo. by Dan Sabbagh, AOL pays $850m in cash for Bebo as cornerstone of international strategy (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article3548913.ece) , The Times, 14 March 2008. * TechCruch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/13/aol-buys-bebo-for-750-million/) quotes Comscore data which says Bebo has 22 million unique visitors. TechCrunch adds: The deal must clear U.S. and EU antitrust hurdles before it closes. Bebo had raised just a single $15 million round of capital from Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark Capital Europe) in May 2006. * BusinessWeek quotes Nielsen Online data indicating that unique visits (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2008/tc20080313_479505.htm?link_position=link2) to Bebo in January 2008 topped 7.1 million, a 60% increase from the same period in 2007.

Full post as published by Lightbulb IP blog on March 13, 2008 (boomark / email).