The husband and wife team who set up the Bebo social networking site after meeting in a London pub are expected to make hundreds of millions of pounds from its sale to the AOL multimedia company.

So interesting huh?!!!

British-born Michael Birch and Xochi, his American wife, spent years earning nothing from various internet ventures. They then hit on the idea of a website where users could communicate with friends, share photographs, watch videos and discover new music.

Launched in 2005, Bebo now has 40 million users worldwide, of which nearly 4.1 million are British, making it this country’s third most popular networking site, behind Facebook and MySpace.

The site is largely used by teenagers, with Princess Beatrice among those who have posted their personal profiles. It is best known for its immensely successful online interactive teen drama KateModern, which attracted three million hits within the first three weeks of its launch last July.

AOL has struggled in recent years to compete against the online dominance of Google, which has its own social networking site called Orkut, and Microsoft, which has a stake in Facebook. AOL, which is part of the Time Warner empire, hopes that the acquisition of Bebo will allow it to promote its instant messaging software to a new generation.

Damn…. I’m so jealous with this brilliant couple!