AOL Bets on Bebo for Turnaround
ADOTAS – The beleaguered AOL is turning to its social network Bebo to help it give its business a much-needed boost, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
AOL bought Bebo in March for $850 million, which some on in the industry considered an extraordinarily high price for a vehicle that hasn’t exactly been churning out streams of advertising revenue. Time Warner (AOL’s parent company) even said as much, calling it the “riskiest” buy the company made in 2008.
Today, Bebo announced plans to pump up revenue by leveraging AOL’s IM users (roughly 124 million strong) to use Bebo’s Social Inbox – a content aggregator that provides users with access to email from Yahoo, Google, AOL and more; feeds from outside sites like Twitter and YouTube and a tool that recommends TV shows, online videos and music based on user data, the Journal reports.
Despite the company’s ambitious plans, skeptics aren’t convinced.
“Who has done a good job at monetizing any social-networking site yet?” Steve Kerho, vice president of analytics, media and marketing optimization at Organic, a digital-marketing firm owned by Omnicom Group, asked the Journal.
– Express your opinion, comment below
Reader Comments.
No comments yet
Leave a Comment
Article Sponsor
More News
Latest News
- Readers weigh in on ATT, ad networks and the iPhone July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — In our weekly poll, readers overwhelmingly said that [...] more »
- Hiring, promotions, location, partnerships and product news July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — Internet Oldtimers Foundation, Jumptap, eXelate, Kampyle, The Digital [...] more »
- OPA large ad units unfurl across the web July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The Online Publishers Association said a group of [...] more »
- Email spam in June worst since 2007 July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — MessageLabs Intelligence released its numbers for June, and [...] more »
- Joost becomes YouTube roadkill, starts layoffs July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — Despite reworking its technology to work in a [...] more »
- Ad networks, not websites, choked on Michael Jackson news July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The news of the pop star’s death saw [...] more »
- StrongMail doubling down on social media, buys PopularMedia July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — StrongMail has announced that it acquired PopularMedia, a [...] more »
-
Loading ...
Spotlight
Trust Me – I’m a Professional … SEOADOTAS — At WebMetro we typically provide SEO Action Plans as part of campaigns. As the name implies, an SEO [...] more...
Features
- Automakers Need to Become Better Conversationalists July 2nd 2009
- Affiliates can win in the media buy game July 2nd 2009
- Crowd-Sourced Ads: A Measured Response June 28th 2009
- Is the government coming for you? June 28th 2009
- Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It June 25th 2009
Reader Favorites
Layoff Tracker
- AOL - 700
- Apple - 50
- Clear Channel - 2,800 total (1,000 currently)
- Google - 340
- IBM - more than 7,800
- Joost - about 90
- MySpace - in June, about 720
- World Avenue - 30 percent of workforce
- Yahoo - 2,220 total, about 700 currently
- Zango - closes, about 90, in addition to earlier layoffs
Classifieds
Recent Comments
- minnickup: Hello, I found your forum is www.adotas.com after I have been surfing the internet to be
- Josette Davids: Great article and an amazing time was had by all at this event. I'm an
- Mike Poserina: There is also a tragic flaw rumored in Bing's ad placement engine. When resolved,
- Andy: Erin, Never mind the commenters who can only see the negative side of things. I thank you
