SpectatorBytes

Techcrunch is reporting a rumor that Bebo may be acquired soon. Rumor: Is Google About to Buy Bebo For $1 Billion To $1.5 Billion? Or Will it Be MySpace?

One of the things that has amazed me lately is the amount of activity that is taking place inside social networks - billions of page views, videos streamed, photos uploaded, millions of applications installed. Neither email nor IM seem to have generated this much activity in their golden age. This is particularly important given that mail has been the main source of ad revenue for Yahoo, MSN and AOL over the past few years. Now, social networking seems to have taken that place with consumers. Monetization efforts remain nascent as current ad engines were designed for other environments - search or web pages. However, given the scale of activity, monetization solutions will emerge over time (social ads, video ads, and digital currencies) and thus this has recently leading me to believe that valuations for many of these assets may not look so out of hand after all.

Update: The only question that remains is how long will a particular social network keep up its current levels of activity. The jury is still out on whether users will stay with a particular social network for a long time (like they did with mail) or if they will eventually leave as soon as a better offering emerges. So, as it is true with most of other businesses on the Web, in buying or investing in asset social networks, one needs to factor in the potential of audiences migrating to competing offerings as part of the overall value of these assets.