• Independent, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 10:45 AM

Top of mind as AOL Europe chief Dana Dunne prepares for his daily run is how the struggling Web portal plans to integrate Bebo, the British-based social networking site bought by the Time Warner unit for $850 million last month. On this day, Bebo takes center stage in a meeting at AOL's European headquarters. Dunne describes the purchase as "a return to AOL's roots," as he says the company was the original creator of social media features like chatrooms, profiles and buddy lists. "That was really the beginning of social networking, and to bring AOL back to that is bringing it back to the roots. It is part of the DNA of the company, what the company believes in," Dunne says. "So the employees were ecstatic, they understood the rationale for it."

But the question is, will users? Because as many critics claim, Bebo in its current form caters to mostly young users and may not be able to generate the kind of ad revenue to justify its hefty price tag. Dunne disagrees. "Advertisers still want to target them [teenagers]. They do spend lots of money targeting the youth market, and over time what was once youth someday becomes more established and evolve to another stage of their lives. This is the perfect medium to get to them." However, despite his unabashed excitement over the new AOL property, Dunne says next to nothing about AOL plans to develop the site.

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