Birch’s mobile-first strategy for Bebo will put users, not advertisers, first
Bebo will be a mobile-only site when it eventually rolls out, with no immediate plans to offer advertising space to brands and marketers.
It is all part of reinventing the social network as something “fast” and “experimental” after it announced its return today, 8 July.
CEO Shaan Puri explained to The Drum that right off the bat the new Bebo will be quite different to what people remember. “We’re actually going to go with a mobile product, rather than web initially,” he said, with the new site putting user experience first.
Puri said that after Michael Birch's $1m buy-back last month they wanted to create something that people would actually use.
“We had the idea for what thought the new Bebo could be, a vision for the product, and it happened to work better on mobile,” he said. “It was made for mobile.”
It will be available as a free app, on Android and iOS with no timeline in place for the roll out of a desktop version.
So what about advertisers? Will the site, which is currently being run by only four people, be relying on mobile ads to bring in revenue?
“Not initially,” said Puri. “What we’re worried about is making something that people want to use. That’s a pretty simple mission but it’s actually really hard to do. People have lots of options, people are very busy so you have to really make something great if you want people to love it and use it. So if we can do that, we believe everything else will fall into place.”
However he did reveal that “there is one thing that not just advertisers but that any brand or entity can tap into.” Explaining this “new product has never been done” before but that it’s “pretty far down the road.” Puri declined to offer any more details on this.
Overall, he said it is being treated like it’s a start-up: “Buying Bebo back was a bold move but it was calculated. It was relatively low-risk but high reward.”