Social networking site Bebo (Blog Early, Blog Often.) has hired Kevin Bachus as their “Chief Product Officer”. Bebo is similar (but smaller) than other social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace.
The most interesting thing about Bebo is that it was acquired by AOL on March 13, 2008 for $850 million. In June, 2010 AOL announced it was planning to sell Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners for (less than an eventually revealed) 10M$US. AOL’s sale was supposedly due to the falling numbers of unique users. Bebo users were moving to the social giants Facebook and Twitter, and AOL said that Bebo couldn’t compete with other Social Networking sites at its current state. “They couldn’t commit to taking on the massive task to keep Bebo in the social network ‘race’ “.
Update May, 2011 – Bebo creator Michael Birch, said of Bebo (after he made about $600 million from selling Bebo to AOL) “I think the main reason it didn’t work was just that Facebook was beating it, and people would leave Bebo to join Facebook,”. What’s Birch up to now? – “little social network. I wouldn’t say it’s a competitor to Facebook,” he quickly added. “I don’t think it makes sense to try and be what they are. I do think it makes sense to be what they’re not.”