To expand the reach of its advertising, AOL has acquired teen social networking site Bebo for $850m in cash.
Bebo, an acronym for “Blog early, blog often”, is an online social media network similar in format to MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, and Yahoo! 360.
According to AOL, Bebo has a total membership of more than 40 million worldwide and is ranked number one in Ireland and New Zealand, and number three in the US in terms of engagement.
In October, Microsoft paid $240m for a 1.6% stake in Facebook.
According to Alexa Internet, social networking website MySpace is currently the world’s fifth most popular website, and the third most popular website in the United States.