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"The folks behind Bebo  may be looking to put some cash in their pockets, one way or another.  According to Venturebeat, the company has said that it has hired a bank to potentially raise another round of funding, while a source close to the matter has said that Bebo  has in fact hired a bank so it can get sold.  With the hiring of a bank, it's highly suggestive that Bebo would be looking to raise a very large amount of funding, most likely from private equity firms and others that deal in late-stage investments.  \nBut if Bebo's looking for someone to buy, there are a few out there that may be looking for a shiny social network with a lot of growth potential and an existing large user base.  Rumors already surfaced of Yahoo hoping to get Bebo under its control, and these rumors only got hotter when Yahoo partnered with Bebo for the company's ad network.  With Bebo's fully embracing attitude of the open movement, the advertising and growth potential for Bebo is looking good.  \nAnd as it was among the first to announce  its own developers platform, it has since signed on to implement Open Social while enabling a licensed version of Facebook's platform in the meantime.  That makes Bebo the first large network to offer a platform for developers that's compatible with existing Facebook apps, and once you add in Open Social support, Bebo will be one open son of a gun, hopefully attractive to every type of application developer out there.  Does that make Bebo more attractive to a potential buyer?  \nIf Bebo is hoping to bank on the open movement, now would be a pretty good time, as the promise and momentum of it all hasn't begun to falter.  While Bebo's estimated value of $1 billion + is still a few billion shy of Facebook's $15 billion valuation.  Nevertheless, there are still a lot of companies out there that would like to have their own powerful social network.  Bebo continues to grow in the U.S. and as social networks like MySpace  get more involved with traditional media (in a sense), an SNS like Bebo is also highly attractive to a large media company.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2007/12/19/bebo-hires-bank/>