January 10, 2008

Bebo’s Platform Now Open for All Developers

Mark Hendrickson

25 comments »

Almost a month ago to the day, social network Bebo announced its developer platform. Or rather, a clone of Facebook’s developer platform. The idea was to copy Facebook’s platform so that developers wouldn’t have to relearn a new one and rebuild their applications (Bebo’s platform still requires tweaks to port an application over from Facebook, however).

Bebo chose to launch its platform with only 40 partners, leaving the rest of Facebook developer community baying at the gates. Today, the company announces the availability of its platform for all developers.

Go here to browse a list of existing Bebo applications. And visit developer.bebo.com for more information on the platform.

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  1. MadMax 3000

    I thought the users over Bebo didn’t really like the idea. They said they didn’t want another facebook.

    hmmmm! Too many copycats out there, it removes the originality of a former ideas or projects.

    More people moved from MySpace to Facebook because it was simple, nicer, less embedded widgets. Now look at Facebook, full of this and that.

    Bebo is becoming like facebook now, with about the same api as fb, it’s just fixing what wasn’t broke.

    The users are what made Bebo, why can’t they listen to the users and everything but FB.

    http://www.givemebeats.com

  2. 1 Million in 365 Days

    It seems that instead of thinking outside the box they really aren’t I guess copying is really simple compared to creating something…

    I wonder who’s the Bebo that will be recreating Bebo in a year from now?

  3. bob

    If anyone know of an easy way to turn a facebook app into a bebo app post it here.

  4. Neil Duckett

    I think it was always a matter of time until they’d open it up to all and sundry.

  5. Fake Dave McClure

    Bebo users will never approach the social graph of Facebook users

  6. Kin Lane

    I think all social networks should have their own platform development environment, even if it is a copy.

    There are plenty of copies in this world, it is inevitable.

    Hopefully once OpenSocial achieves critical mass then we’ll start seeing some innovation occur that operates across all networks.

  7. 113.com

    The trend continues - good sign! /ac.

  8. i

    As a facebook developer Im really reluctant to take my apps to bebo..

    Their UI is horrible..!

  9. rose

    Will Bebo be another facebook clone?


    http://www.bywifi.com — Mobile Transcoding of Videos and Web Pages for Mobile Phone and PDA

  10. Niyaz PK

    Haha….
    The web is opening up.

  11. Miley Cyrus

    @10

    Lol, this is called a “closed” standard: Myspace is still the ONLY big social network that allows users to simply paste widget codes in their profiles.
    Opening up means complying with W3C standards for user profiles content, and not maintaining tightly controlled white-lists that will lead to marginalizing app developers, just like MSFT marginalized windows app developers in 1980s.

  12. Joke Cricket

    Cool

  13. Mark Mayhew

    beautiful, so now the developers of the 13,000 apps on Facebook, the vast majority of which are absolute “dogs”, can peddle them on Bebo?

  14. Boring Market

    Bebo is a great social network, which many people in the US have never heard of. I think opening it up to more developers might create a Facebook flow of apps that are not important and relevant to the users experience. They would just call it spam apps.

  15. El

    Its not a bad move as you all think. I think every SN site will have a Social OS by the end of this year.

    Whether u decide to wait for OpenSocial or you select facebook API is entirely sites business decision. Launching New features & contests every now n then, take a hell lot of time and has a short life span. Apps made by some1 else surely makes sense to keep the fickle minded SN audience active.

    Good move bebo…

    Any news on Opensocial?

  16. Timothy

    people still use Bebo ? , everyone I know who has bebo now has now moved to facebook . Until the next must be tool comes and they move away from facebook.

    —-
    http://www.xencasino.com

  17. DevCase

    Great, now I can ignore third party apps on Bebo too!

    Joke aside, I think they’re clever when making it easy to port existing apps, they will benefit from it.

  18. Zuckerborg

    I agree, Bebo’s UI is dogshit.

  19. Krishna

    Bebo is clever indeed. They made it very easy for all the facebook developers to port over their apps to Bebo. Even if one were to argue that Bebo is not as big as Facebook and the Bebo audience doesn’t appreciate third-party apps, I think it still makes sense for most of the “facebook entrepreneurs” to give it a shot, given the low cost of porting over. In fact, as far as I can tell, most facebook developers would like to see their applications working across all the major social networks. They will do whatever fine-tuning needed on different networks, to get that uptick in adoption.

    We were able to get Books iRead to work (for the most part) on Bebo within 8 hours. And so did more than 200 other apps (there were only 50 before they opened up). Now we are hoping that Beboers will love our social book discovery application, as much as Facebook users do.

  20. Abhishek

    Request to Bebo: you are well designed and easy to use than Facebook. Please don’t allow spammy applications to take over your platform which will bore users to death. Even though I am a Facebook fan I would like you learn from the mistakes Facebook has done so far. Keep up the good work. We will be there soon.

  21. li-mennanaz

    may i go to bebo?