They say that pioneers in the social network sector never die, they just get reinvented, a bit like search marketing you might say! Well, asks the Clickmate team, can the formerly great Bebo find its way back to the promised land?
There’s a familiar pattern with many of the pioneering social networking sites: techno idealists set them up, sell out to the less creative money men desperate to get hold of a money spinner and then they lose their way. Facebook and Twitter have remained comparatively true to their founding ideals, and even though the money men have certainly penetrated the ‘geek’ circles, the original teams are by and large still there.
When it first launched in 2005 Bebo was quickly a sensation, achieving a monthly user audience of some 40 million people. With that penetration and such a defined audience (most of the users were teenagers), it’s hard to see why the early promise could not be fulfilled. The brains behind it were Michael and Xochi Birch. They had missed the perils of the first dot.com crash and launched just at the right time, alongside the likes of MySpace (another site which failed to live up to early expectations).
Three years after its launched, in stepped the money men – in the form of AOL – with a whopping bid of $850 million. AOL management then set about ruining the brand, says industry folklore, but truth be told, it was the unstoppable Facebook which stuck the knife into the back of sites like Bebo and MySpace.
Facebook gave the punters what they wanted and understood, right from the outset, that the first one up the hill would remain supreme. It was a numbers gain, plain and simple.
AOL has frustrated Wall Street and its investors with its seemingly poor strategic thinking which led to some off the wall purchases in the noughties. Two years after buying Bebo, it off-loaded it to Criterion Capital for just $10 million. They didn’t have much luck either, declaring it bankrupt last week. The remains of the dead were offered to the market in an auction and low and behold, the former founders picked it for £1 million.
Given that a relaunched MySpace and a number of former high-fliers are having trouble regaining their former glory, what is the likely future for Bebo?
If it plays to the niches, trying to catch the Facebook users who have fallen by the way, disillusioned by the open drive for ad revenues, then Bebo, like the others, has a chance. Facebook will remain king of the mountain for some time yet, but eventually many of its more trendy users will need to jump ship and join what Facebook was when it first started – a true social networking vehicle, and not an advertising platform.
Bebo has a future, if it can steer the difficult path ahead.