A major outage in service at Bebo apparently does not mean the social network has bitten the dust indefinitely, despite what its co-founder may have initially thought.
The social network went offline Monday night, prompting this from Michael Birch…
Am super sad that Bebo has actually gone. Some very fun times with very cool people. #RIPbebo – keep sharing that luv!
— Michael Birch (@mickbirch) January 30, 2012
But, through the site remains offline, a spokesperson for Criterion Çapital Partners (CCP), which acquired Bebo from AOL (NYSE: AOL), tells paidContent:
“They were doing an aggressive set of updates that put the site down and they are working to get it back up. They definitely are not going out of business – they actually have continued to reinvest in the platform.”
The company is profitable, the spokesperson said.
Hold the press (too late for that), Bebo should be coming back in a matter of hours. #LongLiveBebo
— Michael Birch (@mickbirch) January 30, 2012
AOL bought Bebo from Birch and co-owners for an over-the-top $850 million. Since being sold to CCP, Criterion has slowed but not reversed Bebo’s traffic decline. It enlisted Hi5 co-founder Akash Garg and Xbox co-founder Kevin Bachus as it set about re-investing in technology upgrades, while Birch returned to re-invest and act as an advisor. It has also redesigned.
SeeSaw, the UK VOD service which CCP bought a majority of in summer 2011, recently went offline.