Bebo sold back to company founder Birch

The social networking site Bebo has been sold back to the man who founded it.

Michael Birch sold the site to AOL for $850m (€650m) five years ago - but revealed yesterday that he had bought it back for just $1m.

By comparison, it would cost $60bn to buy Bebo's biggest rival, Facebook.

A survey published this morning shows 7% of Irish internet users still have a Bebo account. The site had 1 million Irish users in its heyday.