• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, May 21, 2007

Look for Yahoo to join Google and Microsoft in soon making a 10-figure acquisition. That's according to the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph, which reported Sunday that Yahoo aims to acquire social networking site Bebo for up to $1 billion.

While Bebo's U.S. membership is relatively small, the site is the largest social networking property in the United Kingdom. Currently Bebo has about 25 million registered members, according to the Telegraph. In the United States, however, Bebo draws just 1.28% of visits to the top 20 social networking sites, according to Hitwise. MySpace, by contrast, accounts for 79.7% of such visits, while Facebook garners 11.47%.

It's no secret that Yahoo's been trying to beef up in the social networking arena. Last year, the company reportedly tried to purchase Facebook for around $1 billion, but Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is said to have rebuffed the offer.

Exactly what Yahoo will do with a social networking site remains unknown. Yes, people also wondered what News Corp. would do with MySpace, but News Corp., unlike Yahoo, still was in the process of developing its online presence -- and drawing an audience -- when it purchased MySpace. Yahoo, by contrast, is already one of the most trafficked sites on the Web.