Winners: Michael and Xochi Birch celebrate their £1million bargain buy (Picture: Alex Tehrani)

It is hard to let go of a company you’ve lovingly built up from scratch.

But when your business is valued at $850million, it’s hard to let sentiment stand in the way of a sale.

So it was with mixed feelings that the husband and wife founders of Bebo let go of what was once the most popular social networking site in Britain.

Michael and Xochi Birch agreed 2008 was the ‘perfect time to sell’ and celebrated their multi-million-dollar deal with a modest trip to the cinema.


But the couple were horrified to see the once flourishing site quickly deteriorate under new owner AOL.



However, five years on, they have bought the site back from the receivers for $1million after it filed for bankruptcy. Now they plan to relaunch it and attempt to go back to the glory days when it had about 40million global monthly users.

Bebo’s popularity diminished over the past five years

Mr Birch tweeted: ‘We just bought Bebo back for $1m. Can we actually reinvent it? Who knows, but it will be fun trying…’

A team called Monkey Inferno has been given the task of ‘reinventing’ the site which was particularly popular among young people. ‘We’re excited about the ambitious challenge of bringing Bebo back, and couldn’t be happier to announce that the product will be back in the hands of the founders,’ said Monkey Inferno chief executive officer Shaan Puri, who will lead a team of 21. ‘We know the odds are stacked against us but we love challenges and the Bebo users deserve better than what they have received in the past few years.’

The site was in freefall within two years of being sold in 2008 – with its demise blamed on lack of investment and direction from AOL. AOL sold it on in 2010, reportedly for under $10million, to Criterion Capital and a consortium of individual investors, including Mr Birch. Bebo was set up in 2005 and by 2007 it was the most popular social networking site in Britain, ahead of MySpace and with Facebook trailing in third.

Users can post blogs, photos, questionnaires, music and videos and encourage others to comment on them.

However, it struggled to stay relevant and was eclipsed by Facebook as well as other sites such as YouTube.