Bebo is a former social networking website launched in 2005 that now describes itself as "a company that dreams up ideas for fun social apps". Grant Denholm, the man behind the Bebo relaunch, has confirmed that the site will not be returning as a social network but as a company that makes social apps. The company launched the app Blab in early 2014, which closed in 2016. In December 2014 a new version of Bebo launched as an avatar hashtag messaging app.
From July 2013, it was owned and operated by its founders Michael Birch and Xochi Birch, who took over from Criterion Capital Partners after the company declared bankruptcy. In July 2019, Amazon through their subsidiary Twitch Interactive bought Bebo for $25 million, however their website has been down.
Users received a personal profile page where they would post blogs, photographs, music, videos, and questionnaires, which other users may answer. Additionally, users could add others as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves.
Each Bebo User received a profile, which included two specific modules: a comment section where other users could leave a message, and a list of the user's friends. Users could select from many more modules to add. By default, when an account was created the profile was private, which limited access to friends specifically added. The user could select the "Public Profile" option so the profile would still be visible to any other members of a school they may have joined. Bebo was youth based and the initial group of connections was based on others from the same school or schools they attended. Profiles may be personalized by a design template that is the background of the user's profile, known as a skin. Profiles also included quizzes which offer multiple choice, polls for their friends to vote in and comment on, photo albums which allows the user to upload an unlimited number of images with a maximum limit of 96 per album, blogs with a comments section, a list of bands of which the user is a fan, a list of groups that the user is a member of. A "Video Box" may be added, either hot-linked from YouTube or copied from a Bebo Media Content Provider's page.
Other features included:
- Lifestream - these changes included uploaded photos, updated flashboxes, and newly added videos and friends. A friend's updates to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other services can also be viewed, if those friends had linked those accounts to their Bebo profile.
- Bebo Mobile - Bebo launched the mobile version of the site in early 2006, allowing users access to Bebo from a mobile device. In 2007 and 2010, the mobile site had been updated to match the design and features of the full site.
- Bebo Authors - on February 22, 2007, Bebo Authors, also known as Bebo Books, was launched. On this section of the site, authors uploaded chapters of their books and also get them reviewed with a certain module.
- Bebo Groups - on July 10, 2007, the "Group" module was added to pages. This enabled people to view groups which were previously joined to a school and were also viewable only to school members. Bebo also gave an option to convert existing Authors or Bands to Groups.
- Bebo Chat - a service called Bebo Chat was launched with several other updates in 2011, which allows users to chat to other users, using a Meebo chat plugin with Bebo branding. Users can also update their 'Saying' and show their availability status, as well as have access to other links to Bebo's pages, and special offers. It also provides a link for users to visit Bebo's fan page on Facebook, where they can 'Like' their page and receive updates.
Source and more detailed info: Wikipedia.
Homepage: http://www.bebo.com/
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