February 08, 2008 | Friday
Bebo: Britain’s billion dollar baby?
By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in News |Search Engines |Google |Yahoo |Microsoft |Social Media
In the midst of fevered speculation over what’s going to happen with Microsoft and Yahoo, the whispers over who is buying British social networking site Bebo and for how much seem positively modest. But when the b-word comes into play, all sorts of otherwise jaded observers sit up and take notice.
That’s b as in billion.
The b-word was first mentioned this time around when Techcrunch reported acquisition buzz earlier this week, estimating a valuation of up to $1.5 billion for the British start-up. As noted by reporter Erick Schonfeld, Bebo has long been subject to such rumours.
The last one was in May 2007, when Yahoo supposedly wanted to buy it for $1 billion...Bebo CEO Michael Birch told me that the Yahoo bid was a complete fabrication and the first he heard of it was from his Dad, who called him up after reading about it. When I contacted Birch last night about this latest rumor, he had no comment.
Bebo has been trying to raise funding of late, with the help of investment bank Allen & Co. Google and News Corp (which, you’ll remember, already owns MySpace) were identified as potential investors. But in the midst of those funds being sought, Yahoo and Microsoft also expressed interest...in buying Bebo outright.
According to the Wall Street Journal‘s Kara Swisher, these talks are extremely “preliminary” and nothing unusual in the course of funding rounds. Further, the bombshell of Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo last week has rather moved Bebo to the back burner for both of those companies. Be that as it may:
Bebo is still at work raising that round, trying to take advantage of the same fair-weather mood that has gotten recent paydays for similar companies like Facebook ($240 million from Microsoft) and Slide ($50 million from T. Rowe Price and Fidelity in another Allen & Co.-brokered deal).
Meanwhile, Google is subject to rumours of its own (what’s new, right?). This time, Wired is reporting that the search monolith may have just purchased Plaxo for $200 million (approximately £103 million). Plaxo has board members who were original Google directors, and the two companies have been working closely on Google’s OpenSocial platform.
All of which leads Owen Thomas to hazard a guess that, if the deal has been done, it’s been brokered “out of friendship”. How sweet! More importantly: It could be an opportunity to get one over on Facebook.
Brad Fitzpatrick, the LiveJournal founder now leading Google’s social-network strategy, wants to work with Joseph Smarr, Plaxo’s chief platform architect...Smarr incorporated Fitzpatrick’s recently developed friend-finding tool hours after its launch. Would Google spend a nine-digit sum to keep an engineer happy? Sure. It’s pocket change for the search giant. An acquisition would also keep Smarr and the technology he’s developed out of Mark Zuckerberg’s hands at Facebook.
It’s all starting to read a bit like Heat magazine for the web world, isn’t it? One small difference: I don’t think the likes of Jordan, Jade Goody, or even Posh and Becks are subject to rumours of the b-word variety very often. No wonder it’s so hard to look away…
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