Per Wednesday’s speculation, LA private equity firm Criterion Capital Partners has confirmed it’s buying social network Bebo from AOL.

Criterion isn’t disclosing any deal terms or price, which has been reported at $2.5 million by PEHub or $10 million by TechCrunch, two years after AOL bought Bebo for $850 million.

Update: VentureBeat adds to the discussion: "Sources close to the negotiations have told VentureBeat that AOL executives are livid that the news has broken and believe Criterion leaked the information. The sale has not yet closed." (emphasis added)

Original Article: Back in the Spring, it became evident that AOL was looking to unload Bebo, especially after its former president joined Facebook.

At that time, Jon Brod, Executive Vice President of AOL Ventures, wrote in an internal memo, "Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space.  AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking."

Brod was then quoted as saying, "AOL is committed to working quickly to determine if there are any interested parties for Bebo and the company’s current expectation is to complete our strategic evaluation by the end of May 2010."

Now, in mid-June, it looks as though AOL has finally find a buyer for Bebo. Adam Ostrow at Mashable reports that the buyer is Criterion Capital Partners, a hedge fund. According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, the price will be "$10 million or less."

AOL bought for $850 million, so it seems like a fair enough deal.

View the carnage for yourself below.  As you can see, Bebo’s had rather few "up" weeks in the UK since June of 2007, even though Ireland was traditionally one of the markets in which it was most successful.

Facebook, meanwhile, has seen its popularity skyrocket, leaving it with a UK market share about 32.7 times larger than Bebo’s.

The news isn’t all bad for AOL and Bebo.  In his report, Hitwise’s Robin Goad pointed out that Bebo ranks fourth in the social networking category (which puts it ahead of MySpace), and 31st overall.  Lots of networks and companies aspire to that sort of prominence.

Still, the steadiness of the site’s decline isn’t likely to incite a bidding war.  AOL will be lucky to get back even a fraction of the $850 million it paid for Bebo in early 2008.

Jon Brod, Executive Vice President of AOL Ventures, wrote in an internal memo obtained by Staci D. Kramer, "Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space.  AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking."

Brod then assigned a timeframe to the decision-making process by stating, "AOL is committed to working quickly to determine if there are any interested parties for Bebo and the company’s current expectation is to complete our strategic evaluation by the end of May 2010."

This is an embarrassing move for AOL, considering the price it paid for Bebo just two years ago.  On the other hand, considering the degree to which Bebo has failed to be competitive with Facebook and MySpace, it’s probably smart for AOL to stop sinking time and money into the site.

There hasn’t been so much as a whisper about possible buyers or costs just yet.  If more information becomes available, we’ll be sure to report it.

The majority (83%) of these children have their profile set so it can only be seen by friends, and 4 percent have a profile that can’t be seen. Parents of these children who are aware that their child visits social networking sites (93%) also say they check on what their child is doing on such sites.  However one in six (17 per cent) parents of this group are not aware that their child visits social networking sites.

Downloading or watching TV episodes or movies on the Internet has increased by 4 percent in the past year by children aged 8-15 who use the Internet at home (from 17 percent in 2008 to 21 percent in 2009).

Ofcom found nearly half (44%) of those aged 12-15 believe that downloading shared copies of films and music for free should not be illegal, with 18 percent saying they don’t know and 38 percent saying it should be illegal. Boys were more likely to say it should not be illegal (48%).

Blogs or sites like Wikipedia where users can add or change information are visited by 18 percent of those aged 8-11 and almost half of those 12-15 (48%). Users of these sites aged 8-11 are much more likely than 12-15 to believe that the information on these types of sites is all or mostly true (70 per cent vs. 48 per cent) with boys aged 8-15 more likely than girls of this age to believe that all or most of the information is true (59 per cent vs. 46 per cent).

Two in five users of social networking sites aged 8-11 and 12-15 also believe that all or most of the information on these sites is true (38% and 40% respectively). One in four aged 12-15 (27%) who use search engines think that they only return results from websites with truthful information.
 

Paul McIntyre, who was the first to report this potential move, noted today that nothing official’s been announced.  He then continued, "However, Bebo has already started informing Australian partners of its exit, which is due in part to Facebook."

And Facebook’s growth in Australia has indeed been phenomenal.  A director of analytics at Nielsen told McIntyre that Australian Internet users are dedicating about 30 percent of their online hours to Facebook, leading the firm to divide things into "Facebook Time" and "Non Facebook Time."

By comparison, recent Hitwise stats show that Facebook receives about one-fourth of all U.S. page views, and one-seventh of all UK page views.

So it’s quite plausible that Bebo will exit Australia, a market in which its performance has been substandard.  This would represent a significant loss for AOL, though, which paid $850 million for Bebo last year.

UPDATE: An AOL representative sent us an email that in part read, "We can confirm that there have been some layoffs, but Bebo.com will continue to have a presence in Australia.  Bebo has only ever had a small number of sales/support staff on the ground in Australia and San Francisco remains Bebo’s headquarters and main operation."

The email then continued, "We are in the process of re-aligning the Bebo business and need to make sure that our resources are aligned with our new business mode in order to execute effectively against our future vision and stay competitive.  We are therefore required to make some difficult decisions about the future of our organisation and its people in order to stay competitive, and are exploring the possibility of centralising a number of our business operations and services."

Related Articles:

> Former Googler Gets Top Spot At Bebo

> MySpace, Bebo Not For Sale

> Bebo Makes European Push

Panier’s resume is very impressive.  Educated at the French engineering institute ENSAM and Harvard, he went on to work at AREVA’s nuclear power plants and Booz Allen Hamilton.  Then, Panier spent six years at Google, and more recently, he’s been COO of Bebo.

The fact that Panier (or anyone) was hired corroborates AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s recent claim that Bebo is not for sale.  The fact that Panier’s so well-qualified may indicate that AOL still intends to funnel a lot of effort into making Bebo a big success.

Indeed, Jon Brod, the EVP of AOL Ventures, said in a statement, "He is the ideal leader to build on Bebo’s existing successes, to chart a course for its future, and to execute against that vision."

Panier himself also said, "The past nine months have seen us create and deliver a more relevant and open social experience for our users across both new and existing markets, and I look forward to building on this foundation."

Rupert Murdoch took the more blunt (and amusing) approach.  While at the Sun Valley media conference, he was asked about selling MySpace.  According to Reuters, the 78-year-old chairman and CEO responded, "Hell, no."

So, although this shouldn’t come as a real surprise, it looks like News Corp isn’t letting Facebook’s success get to it too much.

As for AOL and Bebo, the $850 million acquisition that transpired between them has garnered criticism from the beginning, and many people thought that the Time Warner-AOL split would lead to Bebo’s (re)sale.

But that’s apparently not happening, either, since AOL CEO Tim Armstrong "told Reuters on Thursday that Bebo still has ‘great value’ and that it will be moved to a Ventures unit of the online company so that work can be done to improve the site."

Unless Facebook goes public or somebody finally buys Twitter, then, the social networking world should stay pretty much the same for a while.

Come to find out, that if you search Google (or other search engines) on Bing, you typically get a single "best match" result, with sub-results underneath it. You then get a link that says "search for other results containing…" When you click on that link, you get a regular SERP.  Perhaps even more interesting, underneath the sub-results, there is a search box that lets you search using Google (or whatever search engine the query was for…yahoo, ask, etc.).

Now the results from a search with that box aren’t displayed within Bing. I doubt they could get away with that. Although they do allow you to play videos from within a video search results page with a simple mouseover.

I do find it somewhat interesting that they are making it easier for users to search with their competitors’ search engines by providing the search box right in the SERP. It is perhaps fitting though, considering "Google" was the most-searched term on Microsoft’s Live Search.

It’s not just queries for search engines that give you the one-result-SERP, though. Social networks appear to do the same, though not all of them. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Bebo all do it, but Twitter gives you a full-blow SERP.

There are variations on the formula too. A query for MySpace will give you the one-result-SERP, and a searchable box, just like the search engine queries, but Facebook doesn’t deliver the search box, but instead a customer support phone number. Twitter doesn’t deliver the one-result-SERP, but still includes the searchable box in the top result.

On a sidenote, Bing has some major relevancy issues with video search  (at least with a query for Google or Yahoo). On the first SERP here, I’m only seeing one result that has anything to do with Google whatsoever, apart from the fact that every video on the SERP comes from Google-owned YouTube. I mean seriously…the second result is a Britney Spears video. A Yahoo search brings up nothing about Yahoo, but a bunch of results from Yahoo.

Make of all of this what you will. There are still no doubt plenty of tweaks to be made. After all, Bing isn’t even supposed to be launched yet.

Bebo says it has 22 million users globally with close to half of them in the UK. Previously Bebo was online available in English and Polish.

Nicole Vanderbilt

Bebo has introduced a "Share on Bebo" button for publisher sites in order to create a two-way conversation between the publisher and Bebo platform. When a user shares their media content, a status update will appear in the user’s "sayings" and in their Lifestream, spreading the news to their entire network and driving traffic back to the publisher.

Bebo has also announced new media partners, including AlloCin, RTL’s Clipfish, Telecom Italia owned Yalp!, Diagonal view and Preview Networks’ Filmtrailer which will be incorporated into the sites Open Media platform.

"The proven success of our platform in the UK and Ireland positions us well to expand into these dynamic continental European markets," said Nicole Vanderbilt, VP International, Bebo.

"The social networking audience is growing rapidly and our new sites will allow local users to connect with other users, entertainment and brands, both globally and locally."

Facebook managed to secure the top spot.  This would be a real feather in Mark Zuckerberg’s cap under any condition, and is even more important given the recent terms of service hubbub; critics may have to admit that a few lines of legalese aren’t likely to extinguish such an overwhelming amount of interest.

Then came Bebo.  The sum of $850 million that AOL paid for it still sounds like quite a lot to Americans, but this ranking at least demonstrates that people elsewhere in the world are interested in the social network.  eBay nabbed third place, which may also counteract a few concerns.

YouTube wound up fourth, a retailer called Argos was fifth, then MySpace, Amazon, and the BBC followed in sixth, seventh, and eighth places, respectively.  Autotrader was tenth, which leaves us with ninth place and Yahoo.

It’s not a huge shock to see Yahoo here; it’s popular enough in some circles, plus the whole Microsoft mess must have generated some searches.  What’s interesting is that Yahoo’s ranking draws attention to the absence of Google.  We can only guess that most of the queries Hitwise monitored were performed from either Google.com or Google.co.uk, making it an unlikely search term.