Buzz Networker - Social Networking

A little more information on Bebo.com

by Kevin on November 27th, 2006

Recently I had the pleasure of a brief e-mail exchange with Sarah Gavin the Communications Director from Bebo.com. (You can read my initial review of the site here.) Here is what Sarah had to say about the site:

Bebo currently has 28.5 million registered users worldwide.

How is Bebo different from sites such as MySpace and Facebook?

There are some broad based aspects that social networks could be considered to have in common e.g. blogs, music and the grouping around schools and colleges, but those who regularly use social networking sites will understand that each site is very different. For example; feedback from Beboers and other stakeholders has highlighted the view that Bebo has as a cleaner interface, less invasive advertising and more intuitive navigation.

But, don’t just take our word, here’s what Beboers are saying: http://www.bebo.com/Testimonials.jsp?PageNbr=2

Here’s a small sample of what Beboers are saying:

From the launch of Bebo in July 2005, Bebo’s founders, Michael and Xochi Birch, sought to develop what they believe is the best social networking site. Jim Scheinman also joined them from Friendster where he was one of the first employees of the pioneering SN site. Using their combined knowledge and experience from Friendster and the Birch’s first SN site Ringo (which they sold to Tickle in 2004) they knew what features would work and what wouldn’t. And, they knew how to develop the best framework for a social networking site allowing for scaling and future innovation. These initial, but important, steps have provided Bebo with a robust platform upon which to build allowing it to introduce new areas such as Bebo Bands and Bebo TV in a way that is unique and always intuitive to its users.

Experience also taught Bebo that attracting users is important, but keeping hold of them once you’ve got them is the aim – building the stickiness factor into the site. This is where the real value is and is one of the biggest differentiators between Bebo and other sites such as My Space and Facebook (Cosmscore data below). Beboers spend more time on Bebo than any other SN site—we have the most engaged audience:

Average Minutes per Usage Day Average Minutes per Visitor

MySpace_US 21.8 188.9
Facebook_US 17.1 133.5

Bebo_US 38.4 230.1

Also, MySpace is believed to be skewing older now, while Beboers are teens and young adults (core in UK is 16 -24). And while facebook is a good utility for US college students, Bebo is a much more immersive and engaging multimedia experience.

How does Bebo plan to stay relevant to its audience? (new features, upcoming plans, etc.)

Social networking is about great content and Bebo like its competitors must continue to innovate to ensure that it facilitates the flow of this great content for its users to discover. We listen hard to our users and take onboard their comments – we are constantly innovating the Bebo site, but many of these changes are enhancements and not always noticeable. Bebo Bands has been hugely successful for us with 150,000 artists signing up in just 4 months. We also recently re-launched Bebo TV (our video offering) making it even easier to receive a constant flow of great new video content. BeboTV is now the 5^th largest video sharing site on the web—we’re bigger than Google Video!

We do have a number of new innovations which will land in the forthcoming weeks and last week we launched Bebo Mail – allowing multimedia integration. See Bebo’s press page:

Bebo in the News

Other commercial aspects…

We are seeing more and more that individuals who succeed online are becoming influencers who then inspire and stimulate trends and fashions.Leading Brands are discovering the power of associating themselves with these cool people and are embracing user generated content as a great way for them to build, extend and substantiate their brands.

We are seeing brands starting to leverage the trends in for example video with viral video advertising. For the first time television style advertising has become a reality online, but the differences are that we can target the commercials to the demos that the brand is seeking, and the Beboer can click and take an immediate action in response to that commercial. This is hugely powerful when trying to communicate with today’s teenage audiences who are spending more time online and tuning out traditional advertising. In order for Brands to reach Gen Y, they’ve got to engage them with great content, and if they do that, Beboers will engage with that content, make it their own (like by reskinning their Bebo homepage with a cool branded Nike or ipod skin) and spread the brands message virally through the word of mouth marketing tools that are available to them on Bebo. This is all opt-in, we never push any branding or advertising on Beboers. Again, if it’s great content (funny, emotionally moving, cool, etc…), then the Beboers will love it, even if it is a commercial. This is our business model - we sell Bebo Engagement Marketing programs to companies like Coke & Disney and many more…

Technorati Tags: bebo.com, social networking, myspace, facebook

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