A Billion for Bebo? Bubble, Bubble, Double Trouble
Posted by: Rob Hof on July 11
Mike Arrington at TechCrunch says the social-networking service Bebo has turned down a $550 million buyout offer—not far off from what News Corp. paid for MySpace. Bebo’s asking price: north of $1 billion. That’s on top of Facebook apparently turning down an offer of $750 million not long ago. Another story says the supposed suitor, British Telecom, denies the rumored offer. “Someone’s not telling the truth here, which is always a whole new story,” Arrington notes in comments on his post.
Still, I share the worries of other commenters that this is getting out of hand. Maybe a couple of social-networking sites can build services for the long haul. But with time such a precious commodity—and one that only gets tighter as these folks in high school and college move into jobs and families—I wonder how many of these can survive. And the influence of so much money—vaporous as it may turn out to be—is never good on young companies. When are we going to learn that for good?
