Over the very recent time we have celebrated the rise of the social network.

With Facebook now being used to influence people in coming to a decision on which shoes or PC to buy, and Twitter being treated as important a platform for political campaigning as the campaign bus, it is easy to forget that there have also been some meteoric falls from the limelight.

Back in 2005 ITV paid a total of £175m (£120m initially and another £55m in 2009) for friendsreunited which, some may consider to be classed as one of the first real social engagement sites, and then only 4 years later sold it at a loss of £150m as it realised that it couldn’t compete with the younger whippersnappers such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.

Bebo could be the latest very costly $850m foray into the world of Social for a media group with AOL being forced to confirm that the site may not just be sold off but could be shut down completely, and this could be as early as the end of June.

In an internal AOL Ventures memo, published by Silicon Valley Insider, Jon Brod states that Bebo has been on the decline and that it:

‘would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social network space’.

This investment is something that was also clearly identified as not being available with Jon saying that:

‘AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking’.

This is a significant turning point for the Social market, as the number of top destinations shrink, it may allow for a new player to emerge stimulating further growth and interest, or it may let the market stabilise and mature with the likes of Facebook and Twitter gaining even greater share and influence on the direction of the Social Sphere.

Is that a good thing? I Wonder.