Bebo . . . a social network that allows users to create their own personal pages, weblogs and use an internal email system to communicate . . . currently has around 800,000 users in Ireland and continues to grow. Its success in the Irish market has shocked both owners.

"We were surprised, and it happened very quickly, " Xochi told the Sunday Tribune. "In the space of three months, it just took off. We were amazed." Her husband Michael agreed: "We've never done any marketing so, just by word of mouth, it just took off. We always get asked what the reason was. . ." "and I wish we had an answer, " Xochi added.

The Birchs are computer programmers by trade and in 1999 became self-employed upon seeing the potential of transferring their skills to the internet. In 2003, they launched their first social network, Ringo, which they then sold to the online networking company Tickle, which was acquired by the employment website Monster. com.

"We started selling it three months later because it grew incredibly quickly in a similar way that Bebo has, " Michael said. "We didn't have any money and it got very expensive, and we got very stressed out. It was just the two of us working on it. We really enjoyed doing it, but it was very stressful. We got seller remorse and we thought about doing another one but, because I had sold it to a business, I wasn't allowed do another social network for a year and a half, and so I spent a lot of time thinking about social networking. I had all of this pent-up frustration and then a year and a half passed and I thought I wanted to do another social network, because it was the most fun I'd had even though it was stressful in hindsight." That new social network became Bebo. Bebo currently has 26 full-time employees . . . and supplementary freelance workers who bring their total number to 50 . . . spread across offices in San Francisco, Texas and London.

In June, a rumoured $550m acquisition offer from a British telecom service was rejected by Bebo. It currently has over 20 million users globally and is the second most popular site in Ireland.

There are, of course, warning signs throughout the history of internet social networks that would perhaps prompt the more cautious to sell.

One of the original social networks, Friendster, launched in 2002 and was subsequently offered $30m from Google in a takeover bid. Since then, its popularity plummeted as MySpace (acquired by News Corp in July 2005 for $580m) gained momentum as the social network of choice in the US.

Friendster is now believed to be worth a fraction of that price. With over 30 million profiles in its database, Friendster is dwarved by MySpace's 130 million users.

"People think we will, but we won't, " Michael Birch said about selling the company.

"We're not stressed this time.

We're making money, whereas before we were losing a lot of money. We feel that it can become a lot bigger. We sort of regret selling the first one [Ringo]. I think at the time it was the right thing to do, but those pressures aren't on us this time." Friendster is a cautionary tale for not seizing the moment, and one the Birchs are well aware of, "That is definitely a risk, " Xochi admitted. "We're paranoid enough not to be too cocky and continuously work on Bebo and improve it, and listen to our community."