UK Telegraph says “according to silicon valley gossip” Yahoo! is in talks to buy Bebo, a social networking site created by Michael Birch and Xochi Birch.

Other reports say, "Yahoo! is rumoured to be weighing a $1 billion (£500m) bid for Bebo, the privately owned social networking site, after shuffling its management team to better place itself for acquisitions….Given Bebo’s strength in Britain, an approach by Yahoo! would be likely to involve Toby Coppel, the Yahoo! executive who previously led the company’s global mergers and acquisitions team and was recently appointed managing director of the group’s operations in Europe."

The craze began when Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp pocketed MySpace in 2005 for $580 million folowed by Google Inc's acquisition of YouTube for $1.76 billion. Last week, Microsoft Corp chalked out $649 million to buy aQuantive, an online advertising technology business.

Though Bebo may have 25 million users and 3 billion monthly page views compared to Myspace's 100 million users and around 30 billion monthly page views, a June 2006 Hitwise report said Bebo was the fastest growing social networking site in the US. Last year, Yahoo! failed to purchase Facebook for a $1 billion as creator Mark Zuckerberg refused.

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