By: Senior staff writer – Easton Ellsworth

The TechCrunch UK site reports that Babbel.com has acquired niche competitor FriendsAbroad.com for an undisclosed amount of cash.

What does the deal mean? For starters, FriendsAbroad already boasts hundreds of thousands of members speaking more than 80 languages in nearly all the world’s countries.

According to the terms of the acquisition, FriendsAbroad will close its virtual doors by May 2009 and urge its users to sign up with Babbel.

The ultimate meaning of this agreement is that Babbel has now emerged as the de facto industry leader in online language learning.

The business model for Babbel.com is probably going to involve premium services on a one-time or recurring basis for those looking to improve or share their language skills on a more intense level. Right now users can take free online courses in several languages, including English, Spanish, German French and Italian.

Babbel has over 100,000 members and continues to grow quickly. You can read about its progress at the Babbel blog.

Two things I’d love to see Babbel add:

1. The ability to get a native language speaker to talk with you fast. Wouldn’t it be great if you could instantly get a hold of a volunteer (or professional) translator or interpreter in whatever language you wanted?

2. More languages. This will surely happen over the next several months as the FriendsAbroad buyout goes through.

I happen to love Babbel’s site. I’ve got to learn French someday and so far theirs is the easiest system I’ve found. And it’s free, which is always nice.

What do you think of Babbel and FriendsAbroad? What other competitors exist in this particular tech startup niche?