ESPN has acquired Seattle-based Hoopgurlz.com, a girls-focused basketball which reports on high school and college basketball, offers tournament listings, player profiles, message boards, player blogs and other community centered features. The acquisition is part of ESPN’s online expansion. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Fantasy Sports Ventures, which is the parent company of the FantasyPlayers.com Network, acquired HoopsHype.com, a pro-basketball news and info site with a fantasy sports bent. HoopsHype, which now claims more than a half-million unique users a month, was founded in Spain in 2002. The purchase price is reported in the “low-seven figures”. The FantasyPlayers.com Network includes more than 100 fantasy sports and related web sites, including HoopsWorld.com, Collegehoops.net, DraftExpress.com, HoopsKlyce.com, and  delivers approximately 5 million unique users per months.

Poker supplies web site Poker Stars Direct http://www.pokerstarsdirect.com was acquired by Brian Garvin and Jeff West. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

AOL has announced that it is acquiring social network Bebo for $850 million in cash. Bebo has about 40 million members. Bebo is especially popular in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand and has over 100 staff across its London, San Francisco and Austin offices. In January 2008, Bebo had 22.4 million unique visitors worldwide with visitors averaging more than 3 hours and 30 minutes on the site during the month. 4.8 million unique U.S. visitors came to Bebo in February 2008.  Bebo’s revenues for 2006 were $7 million with $3 million in EBITDA. In 2007 revenues were $20 million with $5 million in EBITDA.

It was reported that Gazprom Media, which is part of Russia’s gas giant Gazprom, has purchased a majority stake in Russia’s youTube equivalent RuTube, valuing the video upload site at about $15 million. Russian analysts think the site, which claims 5.5 million visitors a month was overvalued.

Media General announced that it has signed an agreement with NARAE Enterprises, Inc. to acquire DealTaker.com, an online social shopping portal that offers consumers an array of bargain hunting, posting and comparison opportunities. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2008. DealTaker.com was founded in 2004 and has more than 100,000 registered members as well as relationships with 1,500 affiliated retail businesses. The Web site provides coupons, rebates and bargains, many of them exclusive to DealTaker.com. It currently has more than 400,000 unique visitors per month.

Terms were not disclosed.