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 Send to email | When Will AOL Start Writing Off Bebo? in General |  By Silicon
el 06-Aug-2008 |
aolbebo.jpg: Paste this image in your site, Myspace, Facebook, Ebay copy this code...
 More fuel for those inside and outside of AOL who thought the company paid way to much for Bebo: A precise accounting of just what Time Warner's Web unit got when it plunked down $857 million for the social network earlier this year.
Per TWX's most recent SEC filing, the company is booking almost all of the purchase price -- $760 million -- as goodwill. Another $86 million went to "specific amortizable intangible assets." That is: Beyond $11 million in actual stuff -- servers, Aeron chairs, etc -- there's almost no there there.
Quick accounting refresher: Goodwill basically represents the premium a buyer is paying for a company over and above the book value of its physical asssets. When you buy an Internet company, there's very little in the way of physical assets, so assigning most of the value to goodwill is standard.
The problem comes when the acquirer later has to go back and tell investors, via a writedown, that it paid way, way too much -- as Time Warner itself famously had to do with AOL in 2003. And now that Time Warner has declared that it spent $846 million on something it can't really define, that's a fat target for Bebo skeptics.
Then again, Bebo execs themselves haven't made much of an effort to justify the valuation to begin with. Here's co-founder Michael Birch in April, shortly after the deal was announced:
An exasperated questioner made one last effort to get a straight answer out of Michael: Why did AOL pay $850 million for Bebo, anyway? " "Eight hundred million," Michael says, "was for Fiji."
See Also: Bebo Founder Winks, Nudges, Pockets Payout
AOL: Many Senior Managers Were Against Buy
Bebo Buy Silly; AOL Screwed
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| Meanwhile, back at the plantation | | Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch are the latest Web 2.0 entrepreneurs to cash in on user-generated content. A little over a week ago, the Birches sold Bebo, the third largest social network, to AOL for $850 million, about $600 million of which will reportedly go into the pockets of their jeans. As for the millions of members who have happily served as sharecroppers on the Birches' plantation, [..] Read complete article | | Published 22-Mar-2008 by Rough Ty in General
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| Bebo Founder Winks, Nudges, Pockets Payout (TWX) |  Hey AOLers! Meet your new co-worker, Bebo co-founder Michael Birch. CNET's Caroline McCarthy watched Michael and Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster chat amongst themselves last night at a Glasshouse event in San Francisco. They didn't seem to say much of substance, but that seemed to be fine with Caroline, who declared both men to be " tall, stylish, and exceptionally good-looking." Also: "Witty". [..] Read complete article | | Published 22-Apr-2008 by Silicon in TWX
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| OpenSocial -- Doomed From The Start? |  Yahoo! has officially joined OpenSocial the Google-led app platform/would-be Facebook killer. The idea is that Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), MySpace (NWS), Bebo (TWX) et al allow developers to create apps that work across all of the [..] Read complete article | | Published 25-Mar-2008 by Silicon in NWSTWXGOOGYHOO
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 | Kotaku`s The Gamers Guide |  Blogger | XBOX 360 Gamers Weblog
Gossip, news and leaks for obsessive gamers Kotaku As if you don't waste enough of your time in a gamer's haze, here's Kotaku: a gamer's guide that goes beyond the press release. Gossip, cheats, criticism, design, nostalgia, pred |
| Oh Writing To Myself, Oh Writing To Myself, Oh Writing To Myself [Day Note] | | To: Ashcraft
From: Ashcraft
Ah, yes, you just woke up. Sleep, isn't it WUNDERFUL?! Over the weekend, you and Mini-Bash took your buddy from high school to Shinsekai in Osaka, watched old men rock the cup sake at 10am and ate some seriously good kushikatsu. Last night before you slept, you downloaded a Heatmiser album. You should listen to it. Today, even!
W [..] Read complete article | | Published 26-May-2008 by Brian Ashcraft in day noteNote
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| Kotaku`s The Gamers Guide | Blogger | XBOX 360 Gamers Weblog
Gossip, news and leaks for obsessive gamers Kotaku As if you don't waste enough of your time in a gamer's haze, here's Kotaku: a gamer's guide that goes beyond the press release. Gossip, cheats, criticism, design, nostalgia, pred |
| The Pleasure of Writing About Games [Journalism] | | Over at Gamers With Jobs, Julian Murdoch looks at the craft of writing about games — and how being a gaming journalist has improved his relationship with games. While I've found writing about games has significantly cut into my time I can spend playing games &mdash [..] Read complete article | | Published 13-Jul-2008 by Maggie Greene in Journalism Blogging Culture Writing
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AOL (TWX) closed the Bebo deal today. It also appointed Bebo CEO Joanna Shields head of a new group called "People Networks" that will combine Bebo, AIM, ICQ, and AOL's other community platforms [..] 
It was hard to find any American who had heard of Bebo before AOL (TWX) ponied up $850 million to buy the social network last spring. So what's changed since the deal went down two months ago? [..] 
How do you get the army of developers who've made apps for Facebook to go to work for you? Emulate Facebook. That's what Bebo, AOL's $850 million baby, did last year when it unveiled a c [..] 
Facebook app-makers may be becoming disenchanted with the social network. Will that make them more amenable to, say, Bebo?
That's what AOL (TWX) is hoping: It's using its Mountain View o [..] 
