Bebo update

In my recent post, The top ten fads of the last twenty years, I commented about hoe Bebo was one of these fads- when I wrote the post, AOL were the owners, yet were undecided about the fate of Bebo.

I decided to checkon how Bebo was doing, and found that on June 17th 2010 AOL sold Bebo to a company called Criterion Capital Partners. The sale allegededly raised less then $10million.

I can't find out a lot about this company, but after a few searches on Google and other search engines, I found a company called Criterion Capital, which is a London-based investment bank. I found other sources citing Criterion Capital Partners as a California-based merchant bank/private equity group. Either way, we're probably looking at Bebo's new owners as being bankers.

So what does this mean for the social networking site? Well, it could be anything, really. I can't imagine bankers would be willing to put a lot of capital into a venture that AOL had dubbed as "worthless" at the time of sale, as they're highly unlikely to get a return. At the same time, with the correct thinking and attitude, Bebo could see a massive turnaround and become the next big thing again, thus forcing me to amend my list of fads.

Nothing yet has been revealed for discovered about the fate of Bebo, but with new owners and a new way of thinking, maybe, just maybe, Bebo can become bigger and better than ever before.