Shedding subscribers and struggling to turn around, AOL has appeared as if it would soon be given up by its Time Warner parent.

But now the unit is looking less like an orphan after it announced an $850 million acquisition of Bebo.com, a social-media network.

With more than 40 million members, Bebo is an also-ran to MySpace, which reportedly has as many as 100 million active users, and Facebook, which says it has more than 67 million members. Interest in social-networking sites has been strong, especially after Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook last fall, valuing that site at $15 billion.

For Bebo, AOL is paying much less per member than Microsoft did for Facebook, but Bebo is a smaller, much more bare-bones experience than Facebook is. It is however, the No. 1 social network in Ireland and New Zealand and is the "leading" one in Britain, according to AOL's press release.

Some in the industry scoffed.

The Gawker Media website Valleywag reprinted a message from Randy Falco, AOL's chief executive, to employees this morning, hailing the sale and contending that it puts AOL "in a leading position in social media." Valleywag calls Falco "delusional," and several site commentators point out that they've never even heard of Bebo.

Still, analysts see Bebo as an important part of an endgame for Time Warner and AOL.

"Time Warner has been trying to divest itself of AOL, but they haven't been able to find a buyer," says Rob Enderle, principal analyst and founder of the Enderle Group in San Jose, California. "They got Bebo to increase the value of the bundled property to a Google or a Microsoft, neither of whom have any interest in AOL the way it is."

Enderle notes that Time Warner has consistently blamed AOL for pulling down the company's financial performance, has halted investment in AOL, and recently collapsed the company's Netscape division.

By snapping up Bebo, AOL adds a social-networking site to its two major instant-messaging services—ICQ and AIM—hoping to attract Microsoft's attention in particular.

Assuming Microsoft buys Yahoo and adds its instant messenger service to Microsoft's own, a purchase of AOL down the road would round out a grip on all four I.M. services. Bebo would be the icing on the cake.

"What the market's always wanted to do, is get them all to work together," says Enderle, of the dueling I.M. platforms. Such an acquisition "would give Microsoft significant power."

Of course, that's assuming that Microsoft, after a successful Yahoo battle, really wants to pounce again.

Fred Singer, an AOL senior vice president who left the company in 2002 and is now C.E.O. of a media company called Anystream, says there doesn't need to be another deal for Bebo to make sense.

The Bebo acquisition "stands on its own merits," he says. "Geographically, Bebo tends to be better internationally, and that's where AOL will benefit from growing its audience."

Also on Portfolio.com:

• Multimedia: Battleship Galactica: Epic battles between the two titans of tech, Google and Microsoft.
• The Pirates Can't Be Stopped: A teen hacked into the outfit charged with protecting companies from online piracy.
• The Future of Time Warner: Jeff Bewkes outlines his plans for Time Warner.
• It's Built. Will They Come?: Wikipedia founder launches open-source search site.