AOL buys Bebo for $850 million: time to map the untapped social graph of AIM?

AOL just bought Bebo for $850 million.

If AOL is smart, integration is the first thing that’s going to happen to Bebo. Charlene Li calls it right when she says that one of the most exciting prospects is hooking AIM into a social graph:

The foundation of my premise is that social networks will be like air, integrated into everything that we do. Let’s start with AIM and ICQ, in the case especially for AIM, leading instant messaging platforms. Most social networking sites already have IM-like capabilities built into them, but the reverse isn’t true. And yet, the buddy list of services like AIM reflect very well a key part of my social graph — the people with whom I communicate with in a very intimate, frequent manner.

I bet it’s been frustrating for AOL to own the top Instant Messenger network for years without finding a truly good way to monetize it.

Nobody has figured out a good way to monetize social networks yet, either, but I think that linking a straight-up social network (Bebo) with all of the other social connection points that AOL has (Netscape, AIM, etc), is a step in that direction. Especially if they allow third party developers to get their hands on an API that interfaces with all of these tools.

The conventional wisdom is that social networks will find their pot of gold when they figure out how to do two things simultaneously: sell really targeted ads to advertisers at high prices, and present those ads to users in unobtrusive yet compelling way.

I think that the answer to that lies less in traditional display advertising and more in influence and brand-based advertising. Don’t worry: even I don’t know exactly what I mean yet.

Regardless, if AOL handles it right, they could be building a very powerful platform.

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