Bebo founder pays $1m to buy back site sold for $850m

Michael Birch aims to reinvent site that has lost most of its users since its sale to AOL in 2008.
The internet entrepreneur who founded Bebo has paid $1m (£660,000) to buy back the social networking site five years after selling it to AOL for $850m.
Michael Birch, who co-founded the site with his wife, Xochi, in 2005, tweeted late on Monday: "We just bought back Bebo for $1m. Can we actually re-invent it? Who knows, but will be fun trying …"
Once the darling of younger teenagers in Britain, Bebo reached a peak of 40 million monthly users in 2008 when it was bought by AOL in a deal widely regarded even at the time as significantly overpriced.
By 2010 a lack of strategic leadership on the part of AOL and the rapid growth of Facebook had crippled Bebo, and AOL in effect closed it down, though users could still access the site.
The investment consortium Criterion Capital Partners bought Bebo's assets for between $2.5m and $10m in June 2010, later bringing Birch on board as strategic adviser.
Birch is now the sole owner after beating two rival bids in a post-bankruptcy auction. A team of designers and engineers at Birch's San Francisco-based business Monkey Inferno are now working on redesigning the site.
Shaan Puri, chief executive of Monkey Inferno, said: "We're excited about the ambitious challenge of bringing Bebo back, and couldn't be happier to announce that the product in the hands of the founders. We know the odds are stacked against us but we love challenges and the Bebo users deserve better that what they have received in the past few years."
Birch faces a significant battle to differentiate Bebo from Facebook, which allows users to join from the age of 13. Bebo's core user base was younger teenagers, a notoriously fickle market as the rival MySpace also discovered.
Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jul/02/bebo-founder-buys-back-site