

The Rise of Google+: Email is Social’s Secret Weapon - jonbot
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/07/22/the-fall-of-aol-bebo-and-the-rise-of-google-email-is-social-dummies/

======
dpatru
This is a bit off-topic, but what struck me in this article was the fact that
AOL overpaid for Bebo by $550 million. Why isn't there an eBay for companies?

 _The bidding for Bebo was mediated by Allen & Co. “They just ran circles
around us. It was media guys trying to grab an internet company and they
didn’t know better.” The final purchase price was $850 million dollars. “I
later learned that the only other serious bidder, Sony, stopped at $300
million. They basically had us bidding against ourselves.”_

~~~
gravitronic
<http://www.flippa.com> is sort of like an ebay for websites. And, just like
ebay, it's mostly full of (literally) derivative products sold via a
combination of SEO and regurgitated ideas.

It's interested to check out if you haven't seen it before, though.

~~~
qq66
These types of sites can be very profitable if you operate a fleet of
thousands of them and have automated tools to manage updates etc. to all of
them.

------
frossie
For years the major weakness of gmail was the really poor contacts management.
Now that they have Plus users actively curating their social network into
Circles, I am going to cry if that doesn't tie back to Gmail. I want to be
able to email a circle.

The other missing link is Google Calendar - if I have an appointment with
somebody, I want to tie that it to my other info I have for that person, such
as their phone number or their Plus profile.

There is a ton that one could do with contacts management in Googleworld if
one wanted, but I am not hopeful that Google is interested in pursuing them.

~~~
sahaj
they did announce the people widget. i'm hoping they've thought about this.

------
afterburner
Email is underrated, probably because it's underused by the younger
demographic. Only once you get an office job is someone guaranteed to finally
be forced to get really familiar and comfortable with email, regardless of
where their interests lie. Adoption in university depends on ease of use and
reliance on email for course work, but texting is more convenient because
you're not in front of the same computer all day.

I wonder what the teenager adoption rate is for Google+? I'm guessing lower
than the office crowd? What about among university students?

~~~
Wilya
Fwiw, you can't signup for Google+ giving a birthdate that says you're under
18. It might not prevent young teenagers from coming, but it says something of
the expected audience, from Google's point of view.

~~~
AzAngel
G+ has plans to open up to the 13-18 crowd after they feel they have the
proper security features in place.
[https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/?h...](https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/google-
plus-discuss/RTh_laUTRFo)

~~~
Wilya
Oh. Hadn't thought of that. It makes sense.

------
sudonim
Is the moral of the AOL / Bebo deal that large corps with too much money tend
to overvalue internet companies?

To turn $850 million into $10 million is quite an achievement.

~~~
bproper
I think it's that when chasing the next big thing (social networking) you
shouldn't ignore the assets at hand and assume M&A is the best route.

Google+ will be much better for Google than buying Twitter or Facebook ever
would have been. It integrates with their existing stack and represents their
culture.

~~~
sudonim
That's a much better takeaway. I got stuck on the amounts of money for which
AOL bought and sold Bebo.

~~~
nextparadigms
Not much different than Myspace deals.

~~~
hackerbob
Except Myspace got Google into multi year ad deal that made them several
hundred million, recouping some or most of their investment.

------
cageface
I've always said that any successful electronic communication system will have
to be layered over email.

~~~
robert_nsu
I agree, although I wish I had a nickel for every article out there that
heralds social networking as nails in the coffin of email.

------
zb
On the other hand, Yahoo Messenger is huge, and Yahoo mail is even bigger
(bigger than GMail). And Yahoo has built, for all intents and purposes, an
entire clone of Facebook into them. And do you know who cares?

Nobody, that's who.

So while email integration is important, it's clearly not sufficient in
itself. I don't think AOL really missed an opportunity here - they were doomed
either way.

