Virtual Worlds News: AOL to Buy Bebo for $850 Million

March 16, 2008

AOL announced today that it would be acquiring the social network Bebo for $850 million. This wouldn’t normally be news for this blog, but both companies have had some interesting ties to virtual worlds. Gaia Online has been drawing users through Bebo with an embedded version of its world and Scenecaster is looking to do the same. Likewise, Bunchball has launched a service to allow users of the Bunchball Games & Avatars app to work across all of the networks Bunchball services. It looks like AOL intends to leave most of the network the way it is, and simply begin adding AOL promotions and integrating its tools to Bebo’s already open API. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of it: when AOL left Second Life, it said that we would “soon be seeing more of AOL products and content across the metaverse.” Could this be a part of AOL’s virtual worlds play?

Can you say… I told you so?

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Tags: aol, bebo, virtual worlds, bunchball, gaia online, scenecaster, metaverse

Entry Filed under: virtual worlds. .

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