Bebo 'wont be missed' according to communications professionals
With a decision set to be made by AOL as to the future of social networking site Bebo, it would seem an air of indifference has been felt as to its possible demise.
Next month, an announcement will be made by AOL as to its decision on the future of Bebo should it not find a buyer for the site which has long lived in the shadow of Facebook with 12.8 million users in comparison to Facebook’s 463 million and growing.
Chris Quigley, founder of Team Rubber, commented: “The demise of Bebo is a sign of the maturation of the social media marketplace, a marketplace where Facebook has won the general social war and LinkedIn is winning the business social war. The biggest focus now for the industry is how to feed and build the social ecosystem with apps and games like Farmville and FourSquare.”
Darren Navier, creative director at Leeds digital agency Numiko, described Bebo as 'a strange beast'.
"Neither with the 'cool' or MySpace (despite launching Bands and Authors as dedicated creative spaces) or with the robustness and the smart technology underpinning to become a 'platform' like Facebook," he continued.
"It was always tagged as 'the social network for kids' which - despite it having the same '13 years and older' age limits for users as MySpace - probably put a lot of marketers off using Bebo for fear of being castigated. Thing is - I never knew anyone who had a Bebo account; not one person across all my nephews and nieces and their friends, or the older children of my peer group," he added.
Navier says that Facebook was always going to be where 'mainstream younger audiences' wanted to be and that its demographic was pretty evenly spread.
"It's easy - in hindsight - to see what the likely problems were with Bebo. That said, it doesn't mean that one day there won't be a 'Facebook killer' that comes along - it will just need to be something that does more than simply imitate it. Neither will it start with taking into account brands and marketers and what they need. All they need is eyeballs - get them and the brands will follow," concluded Navier.
Meanwhile, Craig McGill, managing director of social media PR company Contently Managed said that the death of Bebo would not be greatly mourned by communications professionals who had not being using it as often in recent months as they had in previous years to target consumers.
"Most people won't miss it. Most people on it jumped ship many moons ago to Facebook,” said McGill.
“Bebo had a few digital marketing stunts and tricks pulled on it in the early days when people were just learning and toe-dipping into the idea of social media and online customer engagement but nothing on the scale of Burger King's unfriending stunt on Facebook. It also never offered the tools and flexibilities of Facebook, which for all its talk of making itself better for the average person, is continually adapting to make more money.”
McGill explained that he felt, with 'everyone and their granny’ having joined Facebook, Bebo’s salvation could be to reposition by targeting a niche marketplace where only ‘the cool’ hang out.
"Of course Facebook's time will more than likely pass as well," McGill added.