In the first of several major product changes that will sweep through AOL in the coming months, the company is adding more lifestreaming capabilities to its Bebo social network today, including activity stream updates from rival social networks Facebook and MySpace. It is also introducing a visual timeline called a “Lifestory” that puts uploaded photos, events, and (soon) videos into a scrollable, chronological series of postage stamp icons at the top of members’ profile pages. Eventually, people will be able to subscribe to other Lifestories, including those from brands and bands, and embed them in their own profile pages or elsewhere. The timeline will also become the centerpiece of a Bebo iPhone app coming out soon.
The new features should all help to reinvigorate a site that has been in the doldrums lately. But Bebo’s biggest boost will come later this week when AOL migrates all of its AIM Profiles members over to Bebo on Wednesday and Thursday. This single move will more than double Bebo’s presence in the U.S., where AIM Profiles is even bigger than Bebo. According to comScore, Bebo’s unique U.S. visitors have been in decline the past few months to 5 million in January, whereas AIM Profiles has seen an upswing to 8.5 million. (See chart below). Worldwide, Bebo has 22.6 million monthly visitors.
At the center of AOL’s new product strategy is its “Lifestream Platform.” Think of it as FriendFeed for the masses, with personal AIM updates mixed in. Already, Bebo members are able to keep up with their friends’ activities on other sites, such as Flickr, Twitter and Delicious. Now Facebook, MySpace and YouTube are being supported as well. Whenever any of your friends do something on these services, their activity stream shows up on your Bebo page. Once you link an account to Bebo, it automatically keeps track of all of your new friends on that service as well. (The technology is based on AOL’s acquisition of Socialthing! last summer).
If you are an AIM member, all of your AIM buddies now seamlessly appear on Bebo. And through Bebo’s recently launched Social Inbox, you can get all of your lifestream updates, instant messages, and email in one massive feed.
But is this a capitulation to the two big social networks out there? No, says David Liu, the senior vice president and general manager of AOL’s People Networks:
We are not trying to connect everybody to everybody—that is Facebook—just to the content and people important to them.
Bebo is just the beginning. He plans on rolling out the Lifestream platform across revamped versions of AOL’s IM clients (AIM and ICQ), mobile apps, and even other Websites later this year. Regardless of any second thoughts that AOL may have had after buying Bebo, it is a central part of its strategy today. AOL has a huge and active group of millions of IM users that it has been wanting to turn into a social network for years. Now it has a place for them to create profiles and interact, but more importantly it can take the central communication model of social networks—the lifestream—and pour it back into its IM clients.
It is an ambitious undertaking. But will AOL’s take on lifestreaming be compelling enough to keep existing members from leaving? And more importantly, will it be compelling enough to attract new members from eleswhere on the Web?
This is actually a great idea for AOL to take to market. Perhaps Bebo will pay off in some fashion.
there is always scope for 2 social networks in each country.. people dont mind maintaining/just creating 2 profiles if not more..
lets see how they execute integration of aol and bebo, by which they will have massive aol messenger users
What a joke. Bebo is on the skids with AOL. No one cares. Mr. Birch is laughing all the way to the bank. Haaa Haa Haaa! Your $$$$ are mine stupid AOL pigs.
AOL has a terrible history of promising synergies that fail to materialise. We will have to see if Bebo is any different than Time Warner, Winamp, Netscape, Spinner, Xdrive, etc. etc.
My bet is that there will be a short term bump, but nowhere near enough to justify even 10% of the acquisition price for Bebo.
Anjali Sen
best thing b-bow could do is change their name. sounds like an interesting app. not something every other “established” american social network wont offer. currently they beebow has no custom strategic niche offering that is strong enough to pull users from fadbk and myspac. till then they will remain in the doldrums in the US.
LifestoryLocator.com – tell yourself
At this point ANY change would be a good thing. Bebo offers nothing different, and far less than it’s competitors.
Life Streaming is totally hot , but I dont really see any one kicking friendfeed as of now. Also Facebook as inbuilt life streaming where you can import activity from from other social media sites.
Praveen
http://spraveen...ro.blogspot.com
Bebo is a fail, they don’t even have style in the website. Every page you go on, somthing is out of place or with the wrong style. I think this new feature will basically add to the crap of what Bebo actually is.
*Waits* for a new and better social networkto appear.
If traffic from social networks were to go to Bebo, won’t other Social Networks ban the service like what Facebook did to Power.com?
http://techfilipino.com
I guess it’s all about thinking about great ideas — AGAIN — to succeed. Ourstory.com did this first a LONG time ago….
and they blew through >$6M and sold it for a pittance to some Mormon group in Utah. OurStory is not life casting. Dandelife is.
I don’t seethe harm of having this site . all the friends enjoy this site becase that is all I hear all the time
Lifeblob.com a startup from India, has been doing the same timeline stuff for quite some time. Even the UI looks similar, with scrollable timelines.
does not….. lifeblob looks very plain and all about celebrities
Who else misses the old tech crunch site other than me
There’s always http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://techcrunch.com
I mentioned this several weeks ago. AOL has a plan. The Bebo buyout was a good strategy. They have an advantage to Facebook, they were there first. Lets see how it all comes together.
I am not so sure.
AOL has said they had a plan for Time Warner, Winamp, Netscape, Spinner, Xdrive, and countless other acquisitions/deals.
After awhile, it becomes like to boy who cried wolf.
I don’t think anyone will pay anything close to 800 million in cash for bebo today.
Anjali Sen
I’m sorry to say this but I don’t really think it’s a good idea.
AOL seems to lack credibility. I agree with those that suggest the path for AOL will be paved with problems.
Old news!
Brilliant move! Users already just using AIM and updating statuses will not only automatically become members, they’ll instantly become established on the site. The lifestreaming they depict seems a bit unconventional, though. With status updates, they can and should build a viable Twitter-like service with an overall social-network tie-in, which is completely the right formula. This move gives AOL all the resources to implement something like that on the right level.
If they turn my AIM profile into a bebo account, why would I ever visit the site more than I do now (which is zero times per week). Just because you ‘own’ the account doesnt mean people are all of the sudden going to switch their social networking activity just because they have ‘already registered’ for an account (which they actually did not on their own).
This does little to bring Bebo any more new user/activity than they already had. If people like the service, they will continue using it…if people dont like Bebo, this AIM–>Bebo transition wont mean anything.
Valid point, but even if you never touch your profile you’re still established. If AOL wanted, they could push Bebo through their AIM client. While it may annoy some users, it has massive potential to be effective. AOL is in a position to go as far with Bebo as they push, and IMO they should be pushing hard.
Just about every soc net is available through IM clients, although most of the soc activity still occurs on their respective websites themselves.
compare Facebook to Twitter: most FB activity (other than some photouploading) occurs on fb.com while tons of twitter activity occurs through IM clients and the other twitter clients.
is the Lifestory feature powered by Dipity?
I wish. Probably the deadpool, and much more craptastic AOL owned circavie.
http://blog.dip...cavie-importer/
Time as a navigation device? Genius.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I think that most of us will be in for a surprise!
Bringing all their assets together in a smart way has a GOOD chance of playing out! They have a long way to go but I like what I see.
Going up head to head against facebook will not work, but they might have a chance to outwit myspace!
Let’s wait and see, Bebo just got back on my radar!
A little tricked out… lifestreaming may ceate a little boost, but in answer to your last question “Will it be compelling enough to attract new members?” I think only marginally. It’s what kids say they want, but once they have it, they won’t be that impressed.
In all, only around 2% of the 100s of thousands of comments I have seen today on the Bebo website have been good about the change, but 98% seem to hate it comments such as,
“Stop changing Bebo, I came here for …. and ….”
“It sucks, listen to us!!!!!!”
“stop changing plz, your copying myspace and facebook”
Now about 30% of comments posted on the matter have mentioned the new profile looks a mixture between facebook and myspace, and I think it’s very true. Users join Bebo for its uniqueness and now its just another copy of MySpace/Facebook.
In these comments only around 4% actually mention the timeline feature. People are more bothered about there profile not some timeline. Based on how many skins there is on Bebo, which is an aprox of 200,000, now thats 400,000 hours wasted by graphic designers because of this change.
I hope Bebo knows what they are doing, they are going to fall if they don’t do somthing fast.
change change leave the profiles alone pay for aol account and deserve to be notified if shutting off profile or changes being made simple e-mail would have helped
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I hate the new profiles and the new AIM system. Firstly, for those with slow Internet connections; Flash on profiles is not an option. It takes forever to load, resulting in the page jumping up and down. The new AIM system was buggy when it first came out… they took it away and did some maintenance. Only to bring it back and find that a lot of people just weren’t interested in it anymore. It’s the main reason why my profile doesn’t show if I’m online or not. Although I do commend the fact that they’ve allowed Bebo Skin designers a little more flexibility to customise profiles.