AOL Pimps Twitter and Pushes Bebo Aside

A year ago AOL acquired social networking service Bebo for $850 million. It was one of the biggest acquisitions of the year. I haven’t heard much from Bebo since the acquisition.

This morning I was on aol.com (yes I use AOL) and noticed a large full width banner that reads, “Tweet Tweet! Got a Twitter account? Keep up with your tweets at AOL.com!”

AOL allows you to pull in a variety of other services including Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Facebook and MySpace. Bebo is still listed in the My Networks panel but to see it, you need to scroll over to the right. In the premier slot is Twitter – you need to provide AOL with your username and password to access your Twitter account via AOL.

It’s shocking that AOL has decided to push its $850 million acquisition on the side for the current media darling. At a minimum they should rework the widget to feature Bebo along with the other networks or push out Facebook or MySpace. Basically AOL is suggesting that Bebo isn’t as important as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.