When NYPD officer Michael Birch was summoned into a performance evaluation meeting with his commanding officer and a lieutenant one day in August 2012, he was expecting to hear more of what he’d heard in the past about the way he did his job: that he wasn’t generating enough “activity.” As an officer in the transit bureau, he says, that meant being told to issue more summonses for fare evasion, and arresting more people for stealing fellow straphangers’ cell phones.

When AOL paid $850 million for Bebo two years ago, the deal immediately smelled rotten. Now it's looking downright putrid: AOL might write the social network off entirely.

San Francisco's renaissance men are supposed to be clever enough to make millions on internet startups and cultured enough to make home design decisions. In reality, they lack both time and taste, so they just completely outsource the latter .

Well, it's on a hill, but it sure ain't a cabin. Instead, Bebo cofounding couple Michael Birch and Xochi Birch have purchased a $29 million manse in Pacific heights on the corner of Broadway and Broderick. It looks like the Birches purchased the property from one William Mathes, a managing partner at Behrman Capital. Mathes originally purchased the lot for a mere $3.25 million back in 1998.

21-year-old billionaires in the making? To tell the truth, the youngest Forbes has come up with in the past decade was Elon Musk at 27. That was back in 1998, with only $22 million. Musk's face is more lined, but he still isn't a billionaire, even after cashing out from PayPal's sale to eBay. Forbes at least has some standards — only reason I can imagine Zuckerberg isn't in the piece is because his share of Facebook's valuation is still mostly theoretical. As for Bebo's Michael and Xochi Birch? They're back to their birthday announcement and e-card concern BirthdayAlarm.com, not content with a cabin in the hills at all. (Photo by Ryan Anson/Bloomberg News/Landov)

Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch cashed out in the nine figures with the social network's $850 million purchase by AOL. According to the invite for their farewell party, they'll be retiring to a humble, quiet cabin (which, in the Bay Area housing market, should set them back a million or two). What they aren't spending their windfall on?

In 2003, social networking was not yet faddish. Michael Birch sold his self-admitted Friendster clone, Ringo, to online dating site Tickle for a pittance. He came to see that as a mistake, and went on to found Bebo, which he sold to AOL for a giggle-inducing $850 million. A cautionary tale for AOL: Tickle, now a unit of online jobs site Monster, laid off most of its employees in April, and informed its users by email over the weekend that Ringo was shutting down for good. (Photo by Michael Birch)

Poor AOL CEO Randy Falco. He believes that acquiring the social network Bebo for $850 million put AOL in a "leading position" in social networking. Everyone else thinks the buy was a joke — including Bebo cofounder Michael Birch. Asked at an event yesterday about the purchase price, Birch said, "850 million is an interesting number. It's a lot bigger than some numbers and a lot smaller than some numbers. It's not a prime number." Asked how AOL bid itself up to $850 million, Birch said $800 million of it was due Bebo's popularity in Fiji. "Fiji is an up-and-coming market," the Birch told the crowd. Don't wonder why he's so giddy. Birch and his cofounder, his wife Xochi, earned $595 million on the deal.

Michael and Xochi Birch met in a London pub back in 2005. Later, the pair decided to launch a social network from their San Francisco living room. About 40 million people signed up and two years later, AOL plunked down $850 million to buy the site. The Birches, who reportedly owned a 70 percent stake in the company, walk away with $595 million. Our advice for the first few dollars spent, below.