AOL Dumps $1.2 Billion Worth of Acquisitions

destinyland writes "The social networking site Bebo is being sold for just 'a small fraction of the $850 million AOL paid for the site two years ago,' according to the Wall Street Journal. Since its acquisition, 'the site has been shedding users as fast as Facebook and Twitter have been gaining them,' according to one industry observer, quoting an April memo reportedly sent by an AOL executive arguing that Bebo 'has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space.' Bebo's traffic is already down 44% from last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, attracting just 5 million unique US visitors in May (versus 130.4 million for Facebook). And earlier this month, AOL shed the instant messaging service ICQ for $187.5 million — which it had acquired in 1998 for over $408 million."

Comments

AOL needs to be stopped

[troubbble]

AOL just shouldn't be allowed to acquire anything from now on. They seem to ruin everything they touch.

Re:AOL needs to be stopped

[Buzzsaw5]

They seem to ruin everything they touch.

Hopefully they'll acquire the Yankees next.

About half of that is in 30-Day Trial CD-ROMS.

[Anonymous Coward]

BP has shown interest in using them to plug the hole.

*bing*

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got fail!

Remember they bought Netscape

[Gregg M]

Remember they bought Netscape for 4 BILLION! Then they did nothing with it ... nothing! They could have rebuilt AOL to work in the Netscape browser. The way all of Google works today. Overnight Netscape would have gained 40% market share. Even just the Netscape homepage could have brought in some money.