Should You Bebo?
While MySpace gets the attention of the mainstream media, rival Bebo recently celebrated its first birthday with little of the fanfare usually attributed to web 2.0 sites. If you live in the U.S. you might be wondering who or what is Bebo?
Launched in July 2005, Bebo is the 2nd largest social networking site in the world with more than 27 million registered members, making it the fastest growing social networking site on the Net. What is Bebo about? Well Bebo bills itself as:
Bebo is the next generation social networking site where members can stay in touch with their College friends, connect with friends, share photos, discover new interests and just hang out. From previous experience, the people who work at Bebo have learned a lot about what makes social networks fun, and believe that with Bebo they’ve taken social networking to the next level.
As with MySpace, music and bands play an important role in the success of Bebo. Bebo Bands had over 60,000 artists and groups sign-up in the first four weeks after its launch.
Michael Birch, CEO and founder of Bebo commented: “Bebo is focusing on building a site that works for the artist and holds their interests first and foremost. The rise of social networking and user generated content is creating incredible opportunities and putting the potential for success in the hands of individuals. Artists now have a platform to market, upload and even sell their music giving them a real stake in their own futures.”
Birch went on to add: “People love discovering the next big thing and the unique nature of social networking means that it is the community that decides what is good and what isn’t.”
Bebo is in reality a combination of MySpace and Facebook with a little YouTube thrown in. Naturally the demographics of Bebo are very similar to those of MySpace. If you are competing for the younger MySpace crowd, then you should seriously consider having a presence on Bebo. It is growing faster than MySpace, and there are a lot more first mover opportunities at Bebo for marketers than there are at Myspace.
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Sep 27th, 2006
October 5th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
[…] This is a follow up to my previous article about Bebo, and why Bebo should be part of your social media strategy, especially if you are in the U.K. Recently released data from Hitwise shows just how powerful Bebo is becoming: Bebo is catching up quickly to eBay as the most searched for brand in the UK. Since May, the term “bebo” has ranked #2 in the share of UK internet searches after “ebay”, and Bebo’s rapid rise is narrowing the gap. The market share of UK internet searches for “bebo” has increased more than three fold in the past six months and 17.6% in the past three months […]
October 22nd, 2006 at 10:22 pm
[…] That is where the social networks come into play. Yahoo has about $10 billion in cash and still has the opportunity to grab the social mantle back from Google. By buying Facebook, Yahoo adds the 3rd largest social site in the U.S. to its network. The battle for eyeballs is not limited to the U.S. The overseas market continues to grow and the purchase of Bebo would be a bold move by Yahoo. Bebo is bigger than MySpace in the UK and the demographic makeup of Bebo makes it very attractive to advertisers. Thirdly, Yahoo needs a video answer to YouTube and that answer might be Metacafe. A lot of people have never heard of Metacafe but with 525 million pages view in August (according to comScore) and 64.3 average minutes per visitor (YouTube is 66.7 minutes) Metacafe, with Yahoo backing, could easily become the next YouTube. […]