Social Networking: Bye Bye Bebo?
Sunday, April 11th, 2010On the 6th April, AOL publically announced it was looking for a buyer for Bebo, hinting it would be closed down if one wasn’t found. Or in their words, they are: “currently evaluating strategic alternatives, which could include a sale or shutdown of Bebo in 2010”.
The mentions of Bebo on Twitter that day and night came in fast and furious, with the majority of them from Bebo users, angry about the rumours of immediate closure (there seemed to be a belief it was closing that night). Many of them stated that they were planning on jumping ship to Facebook in advance of any termination of their BEBO accounts.
Having personally never been a Bebo user myself, I signed up! We’ll see how long it remains live!
Some Background Info
Bebo has a massively different demographic to the likes of LinkedIn and even Facebook. Bebo has (or had) the biggest share of the under 17 year old market, and was the 2nd largest social network in the UK (with an equally strong following in Australia).
But globally, and more specifically in the US, Bebo is, and has been lagging behind for some time – at it’s peak it had approx 40 million users, compare that to over 400 million active facebook accounts.
Up until early 2007, BEBO and Myspace had almost equal share of the social media market, but in the summer of that year Facebook almost came out of nowhere and established itself as the top dog. Ever since, Bebo’s numbers have been falling… and for a business that’s solely making money from advertising spend based on users and eyeballs, AOL has finally decided that enough’s enough.
Why did it fail?
I think Bebo’s problem was that it simply didn’t innovate. It started out as almost a carbon-copy of Myspace, and didn’t adapt when it needed to. Like Myspace even now, it’s a bit slow, a bit clunky, and still looks like one of the early social networking sites. In the meantime, along comes Facebook, with a real buzz about it globally, and it brings a a fresh approach to social networking with it’s focus on status updates and live news feeds. The result is a truly mainstream social resource, used not just by the schoolkids, but by everyone.
Which all leads to the question – why didn’t it evolve? I personally think that Bebo’s decline wasn’t helped by it’s acquisition by AOL (Time Warner). I think they were just too big, with too many fingers in too many pies, and Bebo was just something else for them to play with. They used their financial clout to jump on the social media bandwagon without the real investment and understanding of making it a long term success.
Look at other examples such as MySpace -acquired by traditional news man Rupert Murdoch (News Corp) in 2005 for $580million (now valued at next to nothing), and also Friends Reunited – one of the UK’s first social networking sites before any of us knew what social networking was. It was purchased by ITV for £175million in 2005, and recently sold for a mere £25million following a massive downturn in usage (although it does appear to have found some momentum again).
It’s no coincidence that the other big names in social media which ARE still performing – Networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – are all still under the original ownership of the then small startup companies whose passion and drive made them the successes they were and still are today. Unlike Bebo’s current owners, they included evolution in their strategies.
Future:
Despite everything, surely for someone, Bebo can be a success – it’s still the 4th most popular Social networking site, and 31st most popular website in general! (globally) – according to recent webstats from Hitwise. Just like the other main players, I don’t believe that Bebo should be written off just yet, and if your business or organisation wants to engage with a younger market, then Bebo is still (for now) a main player.
Unfortunately, I think the announcement regarding Bebo being up for sale, and the rumours that followed of immediate closure won’t help the decline in usage, which in turn doesn’t help the likelihood of a suitable buyer stepping forward.
I’m sure Bebo will find a buyer, and maybe even a UK one (given its popularity here), but certainly AOL will struggle to recoup anything close to the $850 million they paid just 2 years ago, and by the sounds of it – they’ll settle for almost anything. Quite tempted myself.. 
