As i predicted: AOL buys Bebo
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March 13th 2008 |
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Yeah, i predicted it over a month ago and explained why it made sense AOL had to buy Bebo:
If i had to guess who would be a good fit to buy bebo, it would be AOL. yes, AOL.
Why?, because they need it, they have been reacting lately to the very possible idea of they getting to number 3 if the Microsoft-Yahoo merger goes through. and if that happens having a competitive social networking offering from them is vital to their mindshare. bebo fits the bill pretty well because AOL is still strong in the U.K where Bebo main userbase is at, AOL is also still a player in the European market so having Bebo would make a good way to enter emerging European markets like the Russian web. so if i were AOL, i would go out and buy Bebo and Ask (you need a search engine too) right away to make up a good web strategy for the future of the company.
That way they could integrate previous failed efforts like AIM pages into bebo and sync it with their next MyAOL release.
What great accuracy don´t you think?. but i rightly predict lots of things a year, other recent ones have been silverlight in nokia, Social Networks coming to blog platforms (and i predicted that one years ago in advance and how it would happen), etc,etc.
So yeah, no Techcrunch (they predicted the deal a week after me, but not the buyer), gigaOM, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb or TheNextWeb but me.
I also commented on Stowe Boyd post on the deal, where he call it a bad idea that will not work. i instead thins it must work, because AOL would have to do something immensely stupid to mess this deal off. but ok, i got some margin on error there considering we are talking about a post Time Warner-AOL up to this moment that messed up Netscape and ICQ…. so yeah, the doubts are more than well founded.
One of the other reasons why this makes sense is because of the new plethora of sites AOL is bringing into the table, more E-mail and IM consolidation. those 3 factors alone are key in the acquisition of Bebo. and 850 million is not a bad deal considering they went up 1500 million at the top of their buzz. i believe that this can be AOL hit in the same way MySpace was a hit to NewsCorp even if of a lesser degree.
Ok AOL, you reacted well and did the right thing, now you only need to get rid of your Google Shackles, finish your transition, buy ASK and then do a billionaire Advertising deal with Microsoft AdCenter to put this moving in the right direction.
The only way i could think AOL could screw this up is if they indeed tried to merge with Yahoo, such a thing would result in a Total Disaster so it is now even more unlikely to think AOL would ensue in such a HUGE deal, that deal is simply TOO big for anyone but Microsoft in both money and the ability to integrate Yahoo into something else.
Well, again i apologize for this odd post here, but i am still figuring out how to do my new blogs or if should accept an offer to integrate myself to another news blog. let me know what you all think.
You can also read TechCrunch post on it, where Arrington points out how they predicted the deal (and they did, but not the buyer)
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I think AOL’s aquitision of bebo portends the end of bebo…
http://webpoet.wordpress.com/2008/03/13/bebo-aol/
TWL
Comment by Sally Wu — 03-13-08 @ 9:59 pm
Sally Wu » I fear seeing ten million bebo CDs in the mail…
Comment by Derek Anderson — 03-14-08 @ 6:21 am
Hah, cmon. those days are over, at most you would get download in your AIM and AOL mail or pop ads in bebo.
but i seriously think AOL had a chance this time around.
Comment by Avatar — 03-15-08 @ 4:24 pm