Yet another huge sale.AOL has acquired social networking site Bebo for $850 million in cash.Bebo which is third largest social networking sites after myspace and facebook and has members over 40 millions.

AOL’s intention, they told press in a briefing call this morning, is to marry AIM and ICQ with a proper social network. At a high level, AOL is saying they are basing much of their go forward social networking strategy around AIM. Layering in Bebo, they say, lets people communicate both synchronously and asynchronously. The goal is to allow people to both express themselves and extend existing relationships. AIM users have 100 buddies on average. Bebo’s platform allows those users to share and distribute media as well.

A number of potential buyers were interested , including News Corp., Microsoft and Google.News Corp.bought MySpace for $580 million (euro375 million) in 2005 and now its worth more than $15 billion (euro9.69 billion). News Corp. also owns the Fox television and movie studios in addition to its newspaper and Internet holdings.
Bebo has about 100 employees operating in offices in the U.K., San Francisco and Austin, Texas.
Some Details About The Site:
Website: www.bebo.com
Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Founded: July 1, 2005
Acquired: March 13, 2008 by AOL for $850M in Cash