Bebo founder thinks Zynga should buy Bebo
By Alexis • Jun 2nd, 2010 • Category: Industry News
- Photo: Zynga
The paradox of the Internet as a business platform is rather humorous. Not only does the web inherently level the playing field in terms of competition for online businesses, user dynamics also mean when one service gathers steam over competitors, it often steamrolls the competition. Case in point: Google and Yahoo of old, and Facebook and Bebo.
And with that, in an interview with the Telegraph, Bebo co-founder Michael Birch tells the publication he wouldn’t purchase it back from AOL, but thinks that a social gaming company should. We wonder who that could be…
That means you, Zynga
- Photo: Bebo
We say social gaming as if there are many viable entities, but only one social gaming company has the scale to make a stand-alone platform like this work – and that is Zynga, with Michael Birch referencing them directly. He says: ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if a company in the social gaming space, a company like Zynga snapped it up,’ and further concludes given Bebo’s still-high unique visitors, the purchaser would surely make their money back. Not only would Bebo give Zynga Live the basic framework of a full-featured social platform to integrate into Zynga’s service so as to connect its users, it also frees the company from its current reliance on social networking kingpin, Facebook.
Not likely, though
Unfortunately for AOL, Zynga are rumoured to be very far into building their own social platform, Zynga Live. And it is increasingly looking like the company will not make back even a fraction of the $850 million (Nearly £550 million) they paid Michael Birch and his investors to acquire Bebo less than three years ago. You win some you lose some, and with Bebo, AOL made a massive gamble where the dice just didn’t roll correctly for them. Perhaps Zynga Live could be built on Bebo, but even that seems like a pipe dream at this point.
Tags for this article: Bebo, Facebook, social network, social networking, Zynga
