Blodget: Bebo Buy Silly, AOL Screwed

Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider is less than impressed with AOL’s Bebo acquisition announced Thursday. He said that, in effect, “we don’t get it.” Quoted from the report:

- Bebo is (relatively) strong internationally, where AOL is weak. Kara Swisher of AllThingsD added to this, saying that “AOL essentially just forked over all that money for an audience of primarily teenagers in England.”

- Bebo holds its own in a few markets, but “as the social-networking game matures, the spoils will increasingly go to Facebook and MySpace. Bebo, meanwhile, will be left fighting for crumbs. (Lycos, anyone? Excite?)”

- The most likely outcome of putting the two companies together, therefore, is that “the companies’ weaknesses complement each other. And they go down together.”

AOL may have opened its mobile platform back in February, as this author wrote for PC Magazine, and the Bebo acquisition could give AOL a social network with ready-made mobile access. But it still doesn’t sound good.

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