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AOL Makes Bebo Changes, Announces More To Come

AOL this morning unveiled a makeover for Bebo, the social network purchased by the Time Warner company for $850 million earlier this year. The most prominent of the new features is the "social inbox," a "one-stop destination" which aggregates email accounts, site recommendations and social media feeds from across the Web. Beyond the new look and features, Kara Swisher says "a more radical series of announcements" is on the way from the U.K.-based company, which users can expect to be rolled out in the New Year.

The latter series of changes have impressed Yahoo in particular, Swisher says, which continues to negotiate an AOL buyout with parent Time Warner. As part of the changes, AOL will turn its various social media tools -- like chat rooms, news feeds and instant messaging -- into embeddable features on any site. The service will be called "Site Social" and will be monetized through AOL's Platform A advertising system. As one person familiar with the upcoming changes says, "we ... have all these tools and want to reach out to publishers who need to socialize their sites and find it hard to do so."

A new timeline feature will also be added to Bebo profile pages, allowing users to track their friends events over a given time period. The timeline can include any events that a user uploads, from business trips to birthday parties. Swisher says the feature "is definitely the most visually striking version of a news feed that is offered by competitors."

Read the whole story at D: All Things Digital »

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