We can’t get one rumor resolved before another one starts. There is a rumor going around that Yahoo is going to buy Bebo, a social network with 25 million users. The rumor was started by this article in the London Telegraph. As Mashable writes the rumored purchase price is $1 billion. A huge rumor is floating around the UK this weekend, topped off with articles in the British Sunday papers: Yahoo is said to be in talks with Bebo about a $1 billion acquisition. The site, launched in 2005, has been the source of many acquisition rumors – most notably with Viacom – but this one has the strongest signal, having been picked up by the mainstream press. Incidentally, Viacom has also shown interest in buying Last.fm, another success in the UK (see Viacom-Last.fm). If it goes ahead, the acquisition would be almost twice the size of News Corp’s $580m MySpace buy, but cheap compared to Facebook, for which Yahoo was prepared to pay $1.6 billion at one point (Facebook is now worth much more). Bebo has around 25 million users, and founder Michael Birch has previously said that he?d like to keep the site independent – a Bebo IPO may even be possible. Bebo also recently launched a clone of the popular Twitter microblogging service so Yahoo would acquire a Twitter clone as well if the rumored deal actually happens. Last year there were discussions between Yahoo and Facebook but no deal materialized as Facebook decided not to sell. The Yahoo-Bebo rumor is currently listed near the top of blogger Guy Kawasaki’s newly launched rumor website called Truemors. Posted in Social Networks Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Terri Irwin: Life Without Steve ‘Extremely Difficult’
The Crocodile Hunter’s widow says she and her kids have “good days and bad”

Ryan Picks Jordin to Win Idol
Seacrest says Sparks could win because “she’s a great singer and a pretty girl”

Star Trek Star’s Ashes Heading for Space
The cremated remains of James Doohan, who played Scotty, will blast off on April 28

Melanie Brown Welcomes a Girl
The former Scary Spice has said Eddie Murphy is her baby’s father; he has demanded a blood test

Read/WriteWeb Blog Network Launches
The Read/WriteWeb blog, a popular technology blog edited by Richard MacManus, has expanded into a blog network. Read/WriteWeb has announced that the first blog in the network is last100, which will focus on the digital lifestyle and how the Internet is being used in homes. last100 will provide news, reviews and industry analysis on products and services related to the digital lifestyle, with a particular emphasis on how the Internet is being used throughout the home. The site is edited by Steve O’Hear, a London-based consultant and journalist. Steve also writes a blog for ZDNet called The Social Web and wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary In Search of the Valley. Where does the name last100 come from? It refers to what industry insiders call the “last 100 feet” problem, which is the gap between the typical home’s computer and its living-room TV set. While the digital living room is a primary focus of last100, the site will also cover other areas of the digital lifestyle (VoIP, portable media, mobile web etc). The name of website comes from the “last 100 feet” problem or the “gap between the typical home’s computer and its living-room TV set.” Read/WriteWeb also says more blogs in its network will be launching soon. Posted in New Blogs Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Today’s Big Rumor: Google Buying Feedburner
The big rumor today first on Sam Sethi’s Vecosys and now on Techmeme is that Google may be acquiring Feedburner. Valleywag blogs about why Google might want Feedburner and says the rumored purchase price is $100 million. Text ads in feeds receive so little attention from readers that Google, which pursued its own trial, abandoned the experiment. Feed readers, the applications and sites on which geeky internet users scan news items, often do not support the graphical ads which brands prefer, closing off that avenue for a broker such as Feedburner. So, why would Google pay such a high multiple, about 10 times revenues, for the startup? Probably, for the same reason it has developed Google Analytics: it is another way for Google to tie in independent online publishers. Feedburner provides an array of services to sites, such as email newsletter publishing, and the integration of external news and photos. It is more valuable as a publishing service than an ad broker. Much like in the Google-YouTube deal there is also lots of content passing through Feedburner that Google would like to have ads on. Search Engine Land writes that Google is already testing ads in feeds and asks “so why is Google buying them?” Feedburner already has an ad network so technically Google would be buying a competitor. So far Feedburner has focused on some of the larger feeds with hundreds or thousands of subscribers. This leaves tons of smaller feeds with little or no ads running on them. Google already has lots of advertisers using AdWords so they are constantly looking for more places to put them. Feedburner would fill this need for Google and it would make it much easier for Google to reach feeds and own the data on how people are subscribing to feeds. The deal makes good sense for the advertising behemoth but so far it is still only a rumor that they are about to acquire Feedburner. Posted in RSS Feeds Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Rosario Dawson Calls Being Single ‘Really Good’
The Grindhouse star tells PEOPLE it’s nice “spending time with my friends and family”

Mandy Moore Fractures Ankle
The actress injures herself at a magazine shoot, her rep confirms

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 3:43 am and is filed under Celebrity Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.