So…. rumours are that British Telecom tried to buy Bebo. Both sides are denying but nonetheless it is an interesting prospect.

Let’s look at BT – clearly they are a major platform player with significant cash and an ongoing revenue model (both legacy and “next generation”). Via their Tradespace play they’re also building aB2B directory service that has some very 2.0 attributes. If the rumour about Bebo were true, they’d be in a position to tie the bundle up with social networking.

Let’s see how this would work…. consumer users would socially network on BTeebo, they’d search for commercial services on BTradespace and be able to get feedback on various providers from their social network contacts, they would then be able to communicate with both commercial and consumer individuals via the BT platform, be it via IM, click to call or whatever.

Seems to me like a really nice aggregative model that derives extra revenue from the synergistic attributes of the services that make up the platform.

Interesting times…..