AOL shows its worldwide and social networking ambitions by acquiring Bebo.

Social networking is a bit of a strange Internet scene. MySpace and Facebook, rather than some site backed by a major Internet company, became the giants of this space, the darlings of Web 2.0. MySpace was ultimately acquired by News Corp (they are approaching "giant" status I think) while Facebook has thus far maintained its independence. The giants have all dipped their toes into the social networking pool, but MySpace and Facebook have comfortably remained on top of this increasing crowded web sector. The latter social networks have the advantage of having a huge audience already, but I think the giants have made a few mistakes that have limited the popularity of their social networks. In particular, I think Yahoo! and Microsoft have been hurt by their insistence on combining blogging and social networking together. Personally, I like Google's approach best of all because it has both a blogging platform (Blogger) and a social network (Orkut). Although blogging is a common feature of social networks, blogging and social networking don't always go together. In my experience, most people who use social networks don't blog, and a big chunk of those who do blog don't post more than a few times a year (sounds a little like this blog, huh?). Of course there must be some social networkers who do take blogging as seriously as their contacts, but they are definitely part of a minority. On the other side of things, regular standalone blogs often have few social networking functions at all -- even comments can be disabled at a blogger's discretion (at the other extreme, there are also blogs which people read just for the comments!). Google allows bloggers to socially network if they want to (by filling out their profiles and checking other people's profiles out) on Blogger, and perhaps eventually Orkuters will be able to have their own Orkut blogs if they want to; bloggers, at least, can have their cake and eat it, too. On the other hand, Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces and Yahoo! 360 are examples of the other approach of strongly combining social networking with blogging. AOL arguably has been involved in social networking far longer than any of the other giants, and social products remain a core focus of its business. Still, AOL has opted to acquire Bebo, a social network similar to MySpace and Facebook that is quite popular in the UK and Ireland. In my opinion, this is a good acquisition for at least a couple of reasons.

First of all, Bebo is a bonafide social network. AOL is definitely in MySpace/Facebook territory now, rather than the nebulous space occupied by Microsoft and Yahoo! with their social networking/blogging hybrids. With this acquisition, AOL has gained not only another web site, but also a large audience located in countries that perhaps are not as exposed to the AOL brand on the Web as they could be. That "exposure factor" is as I see it the second major benefit that AOL is accruing thanks to this purchase. AOL doesn't quite have the international brand recognition that Google and Yahoo! have right now -- the Bebo acquisition could be the start of a much more worldwide approach from AOL.

With that said, it's going to be tough for anyone to actually challenge MySpace and Facebook. AOL certainly has the resources to market Bebo in countries where other social networks are currently more popular, but convincing people to join yet another social network is not an easy task anymore. It's more important for now that AOL just be involved in this space -- the Bebo acquisition alone has in my opinion allowed AOL to leapfrog over Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google as far as social networking is concerned, and that's nothing to sneeze at. It'll be interesting to see if the other giants start to develop their own in-house social networking offerings more aggressively and if they too decide to make an acquisition or two in response to this big move by AOL.