Amazon.com Inc.-owned streaming service Twitch was reported today to have acquired Bebo Inc., an early social media provider for $25 million.

Founded in 2005, Bebo first competed against Myspace and later Facebook Inc. for social media supremacy. Although it found some audience, particularly in the U.K. where it peaked at over 10 million users, its success was not to be.

The company was purchased by AOL for $850 million in 2008 before being sold two years later for $10 million as Facebook started to dominate social networking. Bebo was owned for a number of years by hedge fund Criterion Capital Partners before being purchased by the site’s founders, Michael and Xochi Birch, for $1 million in 2013.

Attempts to reinvigorate the social networking side of the site failed, with Bebo eventually pivoting into esports streaming.

Amazon has neither confirmed the deal or acquisition price, but TechCrunch reported that there was an apparent bidding war for the company, with both Discord Inc. and Facebook attempting to buy the company as well.

The deal is said to include intellectual property and people. That IP appears to include a custom game streaming platform that includes support for esports tournaments.

But how developed the platform is unclear. Although Bebo’s website is now down, a Archive.org snapshot of the site from June 7, the last day it was live, has the streaming clients for Windows, XBox One and PlayStation 4 all listed as “coming soon,” suggesting that the service had not fully launched prior to the acquisition.

Since acquiring Twitch for $970 million in 2014, Amazon has continued to invest in building out the popular game streaming service with new services, including subscription services, direct game sales and even some social networking features.

The most popular service for game streaming by number of streamers and audience, Twitch has been in a long battle with Google LLC’s YouTube and to a lesser extent Facebook for continued dominance in the sector.

With the Bebo acquisition presumably giving it a platform to expand into its own esports tournaments, Twitch will have a further advantage over its competitors and a potentially highly profitable one at that. Global revenue for esports is expected to pass $1 billion this year for the first time, with predictions that the market could grow to between $1.8 billion and $3.2 billion by 2022.

Photo: Stefan Brending/Wikimedia Commons