It has recently been announced that AOL are to sell its social networking site Bebo and instant messaging service ICQ to Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies (DST). This possible purchase follows not long after DST’s decision to buy into social networking site Facebook and paid a reported $200m for a 1.96% equity stake in May.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the buying process is still in the early stages but the estimated cost of ICQ alone is $200m - $300m. Bebo could also be a part of the deal as it does not fit AOL’s newly developed business model which has been created and implemented by the Chief Executive of AOL, Tim Armstrong, following on from his 100 day review of the business. Furthermore AOL has also confirmed that it plans to cut more than 2.500 jobs in order to achieve a cost saving of over $300m.
In recent years we have seen both Bebo and ICQ far since fade into the shadows of rival sites FaceBook and MySpace, however ICQ is becoming increasingly popular in countries such as Germany and Russian, which combined have over 20million unique users according to com score. This therefore makes this a highly lucrative investment for the Russian based investment company and one definitely to keep an eye on.