A year after the $850 million in cash take over the social networking site Bebo, AOL's People Networks division has finally announced its launch in a some main countries of Europe - including Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.

The 2005-released Bebo, the pride and joy of the AOL, has been extremely popular worldwide - it helps users create profiles on the site for free; stay connected with friends; listen to music; and watch videos.

Though before its acquisition by AOL, Bebo was available in English and Polish, last week it launched a latino site for US-based users. In addition, Bebo's services will also be available in the mother tongue of the users, thanks to its use of IP-based geo-targetting!

With the successful launch of social services across Europe being considered a tough nut to crack, Bebo is stepping into the intensely competitive scenario - with biggies like Facebook, Netlog and MySpace having a strong foothold - in a "smart" way by joining forces with local media partners.

Bebo's extensive collaborations - with AlloCiné, Clipfish, Yalp!, and Filmtrailer, etc - has brought about their integration in Bebo's Open Media platform.

Moreover, Bebo also intends allowing these and other media partners put a button on their websites that would facilitate the sharing of content by users on their profiles by means of status updates.