Michael Birch
Bebo
Early social network and a top competitor to MySpace and Facebook · San Francisco, US (Birch is British)
The founder
Michael Birch, who studied at Imperial College London before moving to San Francisco in 2002, built a string of web ventures with his wife Xochi — including Ringo.com and BirthdayAlarm.com — before launching Bebo in January 2005; by 2007 it was the UK’s sixth most-visited site. After the Bebo saga, he co-founded The Battery, a private members’ club in San Francisco, and remains an active angel investor. He received an OBE in 2015 for services to technology.
How it was sold
AOL bought Bebo for $850 million in cash in March 2008, near the peak of the social-networking land grab, hoping to compete with Facebook and MySpace. As Bebo’s user base collapsed against Facebook, AOL sold it on to Criterion Capital Partners in 2010 for under $10 million; Bebo filed for bankruptcy in 2013, and Birch personally bought his own company back that July for $1 million — a widely cited case study in social-network boom and bust.
Sourced & verified
In the news
Coverage of the Bebo deal from independent outlets — read the original reporting, not just our summary.