Bebo, one of the most using social networking site in Internet Marketing which was bought for nearly a billion dollars two years ago, has been sold for less than $10m (£6.8m). AOL, the internet giant, sold Bebo to private equity group Criterion Capital Partners for less than 2% of the $850m (£574m) it paid for the site in March 2008.
Although details of the sale were not released, it is widely thought the price paid was less than $10m. AOL said it expects to record a tax benefit this quarter of $275m to $325m from the sale.
New York-based AOL said on April 6 it was weighing a sale or shutdown of Bebo, which flopped in the US.
The company said it wasn’t in a position to fund a turnaround of the website after losing ground to bigger social-networking rivals Facebook and MySpace. The price AOL paid for Bebo in 2008 included $766m of goodwill, according to regulatory filings.
AOL will treat the common stock of Bebo as “worthless” for tax purposes.
Bebo’s worldwide unique visitors plunged more than 50% to 12.6 million in April from a year ago, according to analysts. Facebook had 519.1 million unique visitors in April. MySpace drew 111.2 million.
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