AOL's vision for Bebo.

An interesting post from CNet. AOL paid $850M (yup, eight hundred and fifty million dollars) for Bebo. The plan now is mass integration with the other social apps that AOL has acquired: AIM, ICQ, SocialThing, Yedda, and Goowy Media.

That still doesn't get past the fact Bebo is in serious need of a redesign, inside and out. The poor app is starting to show its age a little.

Full article is here.

The Top 25 Social Networking Sites

Figures are based on compete.com's user visit data and not the amount of registered users. On first glance there's a few surprises.

1. facebook.com
2. myspace.com
3. twitter.com
4. flixster.com
5. linkedin.com
6. tagged.com
7. classmates.com
8.myyearbook.com
9. livejournal.com
10. imeem.com
11. reunion.com
12. ning.com
13.blackplanet.com
14. bebo.com
15. hi5.com
16. yuku.com
17. cafemom.com
18. friendster.com
19. xanga.com
20. 360.yahoo.com
21. orkut.com
22. urbanchat.com
23. fubar.com
24. asiantown.net
25. tickle.com

There's no major shock in terms of the top three. Linkedin creeping up was expected as the upper management started fearing for their jobs and ensued vigourous networking.

Interesting to see that Google's offering, Orkut, is way down futher than I expected. It was originally developed during one employee's 20% time (staff were given 20% of their paid time to work on personal projects). It's still widely used in the far east but generally ignored for the big three in the west.

Bebo has just become a teenagers playground and it's hitting my ignore list rapidly. Each to their own I suppose.