Remember the English social network called Bebo?

No?

Not surprising since its only real claim to fame was that Aol lost its mind and bought it for $850 back in 2008 and from there returned to an even worse state of obscurity. During Aol’s latest round of trying to figure out what their future is they let the word out that they would be willing to sell Bebo to whoever was interested.

It was also stated that if they couldn’t find a buyer they would shut the service down which according to Mashable won’t happen as a buyer has showed up.

Update: The buyer of Bebo is Criterion Capital Partners, a hedge fund. We’re digging for more details.

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AOL has found a buyer for struggling social network Bebo, we are hearing from sources close to the deal. The Internet company has been publicly looking for an acquirer for some time, and in April, news leaked that AOL would likely shut down the site if a buyer was not found.

We can all return to not caring now.

Bebo gets sold – no-one cares is a post from: The Inquisitr

It looks like Facebook’s web dominance has claimed another victim, as an AOL memo circulating indicates that the company plans to shutter or sell the social networking site Bebo.

Although AOL sunk $850 million into Bebo two years ago, it appears that that investment is being written off:

“Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space. AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking,” reads the memo.

Facebook is far and away the top dog in the social networking game, and the site had nearly 463 million unique visitors in February, a 68% increase over the same time last year. Bebo, on the other hand, was down 45% over last year with a comparatively paltry 12.8 million unique visitors. AOL expects to decide Bebo’s fate for good by next month.

[PC World]

AOL to shutter or sell Bebo, memo says is a post from: The Inquisitr

SocialMedia Networks serves ads in about 5,000 different applications on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5. It claims to be the Internet’s largest independent social media advertising network.

The new funding will go toward expanding the company’s Chicago, New York, and international sales teams.

SocialMedia Networks has been around since 2007.

SocialMedia Networks Snags $6 Million is a post from: The Inquisitr

According to their QBase entry, “Simplifying the management of sites and services that you already use like blogs and social networks, socialthing! synchronizes your personal information, content, and friendships so that you can post this information across the social web, as opposed to just having it contained in a single site.”

Socialthing can be added to a long list of AOL Acquisitions, including Truveo, Sphere, Bebo and Weblogs Inc. in the social space.

AOL may not be the most popular or most highly trafficked company on the web, but they’re like the little engine that could, they keep on trying, and they aren’t afraid to spend money to buy in destinations and tools to help them achieve their goals. Their success rate with acquisitions may not be perfect, and we’ve covered issues at Weblogs Inc previously, but they always seem to try their best with acquisitions, as opposed to Google who has a track record of letting acquisitions die off while completely ignoring existing user bases.

The question then becomes, who would you rather be acquired by? On their track record with acquisitions, and a company that is trying its hardest to deliver the best from acquired products, the answer for me at least would be AOL and I’m betting that I’m not alone in thinking that way either.

I want to be acquired by AOL [Socialthing] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Arzoola’s Social Call lets you make and receive free VOIP-powered calls through social network-specific apps. What sets it apart from other services is the fact that it lets you do so anonymously: Users give out their phone numbers only to Arzoola, which then masks them from public view.

“We simply act as an intermediary, shielding the phone numbers from each party,” CEO Roie Edery explained to The Inquisitr. “Instead of posting your phone number online, you substitute it with our ‘Call Me’ link.”

The first application, launched Saturday, is designed with Craigslist in mind. You just go to Arzoola’s web site, enter your phone number, zip code, and an expiration time (i.e. only accept calls for two days) — then it gives you code to post within your listing. The code lets anyone click to call you without ever gaining access to your phone number. While the tool is being marketed specifically for use on Craigslist, it could be used anywhere you can post HTML embed code — on a MySpace profile, for example, or on a blog where you wanted to receive calls for a limited period of time without divulging your digits.

Next up is an app for Facebook, which Edery tells us will be launching “very soon” — likely within the next week or two, pending the network’s approval. It will add a “Call Me” button directly below your profile picture and will let you specify what days and times to let calls be patched through.

All the applications use a business-grade VOIP carrier. As of now, the calls are totally ad-free. Edery says that could change in the future — but end users will always be able to use the service free-of-charge.

“Our focus is to provide this service for free,” he said. “Once adoption picks up, it is our intent to enable our audio advertising platform. Basically, while a user is on hold waiting for us to call the other party, they will hear an ad.”

Arzoola’s Social Call will also eventually offer premium services such as voicemail and number-free text messaging, Edery tells us.

Arzoola: A New Voice In Social Network Communication is a post from: The Inquisitr

New analysis out from Hitwise today shows Facebook taking 45 percent of all social network traffic in the UK in June. Both Bebo — now in second place, with 25 percent — and MySpace — in third, with just under 15 percent — have lost significant numbers over the past several months.

Perhaps more intriguing, though, is the deeper analysis ranking all sites considered Web 2.0 — not just social networks. Facebook is still a strong first in the UK there, but YouTube is the next most visited service. Bebo came in third, Wikipedia was fourth, and MySpace was down to fifth for the month of June.

On the whole, HitWise says one out of every five URLs accessed in the UK belonged to one of those five services.

MySpace Slipping In UK Traffic is a post from: The Inquisitr

First of all, Qbox requires you to download and install a program — strange, considering the concept is totally web-driven. Once you install the utility, though, things get even murkier. It took me some random clicking around to figure out that I was supposed to hit a random, unlabeled icon that basically just opened the Qbox web site in my browser. Again, no instructions, but I deduced that I was presumably now supposed to click through the site to find an option to create an account before it’d let me use the service.

At this point, I was getting a little annoyed, but I was still intrigued enough to keep going. The next problem, though, popped up after I created my account, when I tried to search for songs (also done through the web site — not through the program it made me install). I found plenty of results, but when I tried to click on the play button for any of them, the web site gave me a pop-up window saying the Qplayer utility — the same utility from which I had clicked over to the site in the first place — hadn’t yet been installed.

I still wasn’t quite ready to give up, so after a few unsuccessful attempts at getting around this, I decided to humor it and click “OK” — hoping a redownload would finally convince this service I had the program and was ready to proceed. But alas, still no success. I was unable to ever get it to even recognize that I had downloaded and installed the damned thing.

Oh yeah, and clicking on the “User Guide” just played a long and tedious video with no useful information. The “Help” section consisted of a FAQ that didn’t address anything related to my issues.

I did a little digging and discovered I wasn’t the first one to have problems with Qbox. Blogger Matt Rosoff of Webware wrote about troubles of his own when he tried it out several days ago.

Don’t get me wrong — the Qbox concept is great. It’d be a treat to be able to track down and play music from various social network services in one central place, without having to deal with all the annoying internal menus and search processes of each individual site. Unfortunately, though, it appears that Qbox has a ways to go before it becomes a practical, functioning solution. Let’s hope for its sake that someone else doesn’t take the same idea and do it well in the meantime, or Qbox may never amount to more than a short-lived blip on the Web 2.0 radar.

Qbox: Great Idea, But Doesn’t Work is a post from: The Inquisitr

Bebo already licenses access to the Facebook Platform so how it can be done is already visible. Under the new scheme ANY social network will be able to provide support for Facebook apps on their own site at no charge.

I opened the post with a question but I’m going to answer it by suggesting that while there is zero doubt that this move by Facebook is a direct response to Google (and reactionary moves are never brilliant) the depth of applications on the Facebook platform will likely see a slew of mid to low range social networks rolling out support for this.

The down side: we are now seeing a social networking cold war where various parties are lining up behind Google and Facebook, with some trying to remain neutral. Will the stand off benefit users? Unlikely, but the future of the biggest game in town is at stake, so expect both sides to further up the ante as the stand off continues.

Social Networking Cold War: FB To Open Source Platform is a post from: The Inquisitr

Announced today, Bebo’s CEO Joanna Shields will serve as Executive Vice President of AOL and President of People Networks, which combines Bebo, AIM, ICQ and AOL’s other community platforms. Shields will report to AOL President and COO Ron Gran.

People Networks will integrate AOL’s IM, chat and mail functionality into Bebo, as well as letting users merge AIM and Bebo profiles so they can use common screen names without re-registering.

People Networks will also integrate other AOL acquisitions, including widget technology company Goowy Media and social search question and answer service Yedda. AOL plans also include the cross-distribution of AOL and Bebo content and applications across both services.

AOL Finalizes Bebo Acquisition is a post from: The Inquisitr