Yahoo!
For Yahoo!, it's a great catch. Bebo may lag behind stateside social networks like Facebook and News Corp.'s
It also gives Yahoo! a clip culture play outside of its own fledgling video search service. Bebo became the launching pad for Lonelygirl15 spinoff KateModern this summer. It announced last week it would team up with Sony
This all comes months after Yahoo! was rumored to be eyeing Bebo as a takeover target, and this ad deal doesn't necessarily hose down that speculation. If anything, once Yahoo! digs its claws deeper into the revenue-generating power of Bebo, it will be in a better position to make a financially feasible buyout offer.
Following last year's move by Microsoft
So eat up, Yahoo!, but don't forget that hungry investors wouldn't mind gnawing on Bebo on the whole if the price is right.
Recent Fool.com content is brimming with Bebo babble:
Yahoo! is a Stock Advisor recommendation. Microsoft is an active stock pick for Inside Value newsletter subscribers. Want something for free? Check out either service for the next 30 days with a trial subscription offer.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is glad to see social networking get its due, although he still has concerns over the actual monetization process. He does not own shares in any company in this story. He is part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.