The social network land grab continues - and pretty cheaply!

So, AOL is picking up Bebo for a snip at $850million. Considering the mark-up Mudoch would expect on his $580 million for Myspace, and the astronomical valuation of Facebook, grabbing a decent slice of social network landscape for less than a billion is a pretty astute move - and this from AOL!

It probably is a fairly astute move, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's cheap. If anyone knows anything about inflated prices its AOL. They probably paid about what it's worth. Quite whether they'll extract that in display ads when all the world is search crazy reamins to be seen. It'll be interesting to see if Bebo pages start slipping down a bit on Google rankings in favour of myspace.

Murdoch's move to buy MySpace has to be viewed as astute following the deal where Google sells ads and guarantee News Corp around $900m, depending on user numbers over a few years. In that context I think AOL's purchase has to be viewed as a good move.

I've written 100 times on how social networks need to be careful not to alienate their users by bombarding them with too many ads. Platform A looks like a loaded gun, ready to spray ads everywhere and cull Bebo's commendably modest one ad per page policy. That said AOL are very clued up on the commercial side of things in the UK after a few senior hires so I'm sure they'll get a sensible plan in place soon.

Madness, they'll never see their money back, another Dot BOMB disaster in the making