Studio City Firm Welcomes Social Site to Portfolio

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Studio City Firm Welcomes Social Site to Portfolio
Adam Levin at Bebo’s office in San Francisco.

Can a Studio City financial advisory firm turn AOL Inc.’s social networking fiasco into a success story?

Criterion Capital Partners LLC acquired Bebo in the belief that the once-popular social networking site has the potential to stake out some sort of claim in the social networking world.

“We don’t get into companies that are worthless,” said Adam Levin, Criterion’s managing partner. “We were fortunate to win a diamond in the rough. We believe Bebo has enormous growth potential. Very few digital properties measure up to Bebo in terms of potential for profit, an active user base and a scalable infrastructure.”

Criterion has taken over global operations of Bebo, which remains based in San Francisco. The firm, which has three principals who specialize in providing capital and financial advice to distressed companies, has also worked with mobile video company CinemaElectric Inc. in Los Angeles and children’s bookstore chain Storyopolis in Sherman Oaks.

Founded in 2005, Bebo was once considered a leader in the upsurge of international social networking sites. It was the most popular social networking website in the United Kingdom in 2007 with 10.6 million viewers, according to Internet market research company ComScore Inc. In comparison, MySpace had 10.1 million at the time. AOL bought the booming site in 2008 for $850 million.

But the traffic declined sharply after the AOL purchase. Bebo now has about 2 million visitors in the United States compared with Facebook’s 124 million, according to website traffic tracker Compete.

Levin would not disclose how much Criterion paid for Bebo, but it’s been speculated that the deal value falls between $10 million and $17 million.

An AOL spokeswoman did not return a call for comment.

Levin cited Bebo’s strong international user base as one area for growth. Bebo has about 45 million international users, and Facebook has 280 million.

Levin said there are a lot of people out there in the world who have yet to sign up.

“Both here in the states and abroad, the numbers for people using social networking continue to skyrocket,” he said. “Social networking is in its infancy as an industry so there is plenty of room for Bebo to grow.”

Alert System

A Glendale company is ready to sound alarms in Connecticut.

Everbridge Inc., an emergency notification system provider, has installed the first statewide crisis alert system that provides emergency information to Connecticut’s 3.5 million residents via phone calls.

“The state of Connecticut wanted to ensure that when something happens, they’re able to communicate very rapidly,” said Marc Ladin, Everbridge’s vice president of global marketing.

Everbridge’s technology will allow the government to send voice message or text message alerts to its residents in the event of a crisis or natural disaster. The state has full access to residents’ contact information, but is urging them to register additional cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses online. Businesses can also sign up for alerts.

This is the largest deployment of the Everbridge system, which is in use by the city of Beverly Hills, and at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Pepperdine University. The company plans to extend the alert system to other states within the next year.

Ladin said state emergency notification programs such as the ones Everbridge provides will soon become standard.

“If you fast-forward 10 years, every single state will have deployed a system similar to Connecticut,” he said.

Staff reporter Natalie Jarvey can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230.

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