EARTH DAY for GLOBALWARMING

Washington: AOL plans to close or sell the social networking site Bebo, which bought U.S. $ 850 million two years ago, according to a memo from management that was published in Washington, DC, Tuesday (6 / 4). "In an annual filing for Bebo that we'll make tomorrow, AOL will show that it is currently evaluating strategic alternatives, which could include the sale or off Bebo in 2010," said AOL's memo to employees obtained by Silicon Valley Insider and other technology blog .

"Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has declined. And as a result, will require significant investment to compete in the competitive social networking space," says a memo from Jon Brod, the AOL executive vice president Ventures. In essence, today AOL is not in a position to fund further and support Bebo in the turn around in pursuit of social networking.

"AOL is committed to work quickly to determine if there are interested parties to Bebo and the company's current expectation is to complete our strategic evaluation at the end of May 2010," said Brod. Bebo has steadily losing its competitive edge against social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

AOL, formerly known as America Online, Time Warner released in December became an independent company. Tim Armstrong, a former Google executive, has started a round of aggressive cost cutting at AOL since taking control last year and plans to refocus the company on "content, advertising, and communications."