AOL’s People Networks division has today announced the launch of social networking site Bebo, which it acquired almost exactly one year ago, in several key European countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.
Before, Bebo was only available in English and for some reason also Polish, but now it will use IP-based geo-targetting to cater services in users’ mother tongues. It launched a latino site for U.S.-based users just last week.
Successfully rolling out social services across Europe is never an easy feat to accomplish, and Netlog and Facebook have a pretty strong foothold here, as does MySpace, although the latter appears to be struggling with their expansion strategy lately. Bebo is doing it the smart way – which is of course no guarantee for success – by teaming up with local media partners. Bebo is partnering with AlloCiné, RTL’s Clipfish, Telecom Italia owned Yalp!, Diagonal View and Preview Networks’ Filmtrailer, which will all be incorporated in Bebo’s Open Media platform. Bebo is planning to let these and additional media partners put a button on their websites that lets users share content on their profiles via status updates.
That’s the right strategy in my opinion, but they will find that competing against both the big boys who’re already present throughout Europe as well as the local players who’ve been around – in many cases – since the turn of the century, will be a long, hard battle. Those who have been following the developments in social networking services here in Europe, as well as the rough decline of online advertising budgets in general, would tell them the same.
We’ve reported in the past that AOL might be contemplating a sale of Bebo, but the press release makes it sound like they’re in fact heavily relying on Bebo for their social strategy instead:
Bebo forms the centrepiece of the AOL People Networks business unit. People Networks’ collection of community platforms help improve people’s lives by connecting them with everyone and everything they care about. People Networks does this through a web-based experience on Bebo.com, through desktop clients and mobile devices. At the heart of People Networks is the Lifestream, a real-time, platform for aggregating and distributing social feeds across mediums.
It will be interesting to look back in a couple of years and see if Bebo made the right decision at the right time, but I have my doubts about their capacity to effectively compete in Europe starting this late in the game.
FIRST COMMENT! FIRST COMMENT! ….
Nothing.
Anjali SpammerSen
From India
@above,
Looney asshole, stop this fucking nonsense.
once again i get this coveted place of first comment on TC,
on this occasion, i would like to thank all my TC fans here,
who had the unlimited supply of patience to bear me through thick and more thick,
besides i also prey for world peace
thanks, luv u all
only yours anjali
beebow is late in the “name”. combined with that homepage shot… ouch. just when you thought the pain was gonna end. these open sores may never heal.
This is very interesting. Im sure bebo is going to struggle a lot in Europe!!
I agree, I think they will have some issues.
wow Bebo still exists?
Euro social networks
Check alexa and compare:
bebo.com vs netlog.com vs badoo.com
I wouldn’t trust Alexa for non-English speaking traffic though.
Can you elaborate Robin?
Bebo is/was huge in UK and Ireland. Both with large communities of young Polish workers. Hence the Polish version of Bebo !.
Just an aside, in Ireland and the UK more people speak Polish than any of the native Gaelic languages.
bebo is in Polish because one of big websites gazeta.pl made an agreement with them and add them as their social network to their portal ( not very popular as far as i know)
They need to take it somewhere.
The social site craze continues, film at 11, what else is new, lol.
Bebo is a M&A hoax, I don’t think it was ever used by many people.
I guess AOL has to rely on their one last big weapon in their hand.
TechFilipino
Hm… I wonder how Randy Falco feels about this. I also wonder if this was a Tim Armstrong move or Jeff Bewkes move. It doesn’t seem like a very good one to me, and if this is Mr. Armstrong’s attempt at restoring AOL, I call shenanigans. Or should I say, I don’t think it will succeed in generating positive cash flows for the Time Warner division.
@above,
Looney asshole, stop this fucking nonsense. Looney asshole, stop this fucking nonsense.