Social Networking Site Looks Askance At Enormous Wad Of Cash

Jim Scheinman, Bebo’s “deal guy,” now has a story he can tell his grandkids someday. For he just left $552 million U.S. dollars on the table.
TechCrunch says the MySpace look-a-like (okay, Bebo looks a little better) rejected the offer from a British Telecom a few weeks ago.
Bebo has 25 million registered users and 3 billion monthly page views. Myspace, for comparison, has 70+ million users and nearly 30 billion monthly page views.
I’m sure the Bebo team had good reasons to reject the offer, but I hope “we can get more money” is not one of them. I know it is highly likely that there is another entitiy willing to pay even more for this business, but these type of valuations seem outrageous to me.
Why not throw some geeks in a room and cook up your own MySpaceish thing for a fraction of the cost? No offense to the geeks at Bebo, nor anywhere else. I’m just saying I don’t see anything proprietary here. No killer app, nor niche untapped .