Bebo
 |
|
| Type of business | Private |
|---|---|
|
Type of site
|
Company website |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Founded | January 2005 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Owner |
Michael Birch Xochi Birch |
| Founder(s) |
Michael Birch Xochi Birch |
| Key people | Shaan Puri |
| Products | Social Messaging Apps on iOS and Android |
| Operating income | $1.1 million (USD) |
| Divisions | iOS and Android |
| Slogan(s) | Probably Not For Boring People |
| Website | Bebo.com |
| Alexa rank |
 161,926 (October 2016) |
| Launched | July 2005 |
Bebo is a social networking website launched in 2005. It now describes itself as "a company that dreams up ideas for fun social apps;" Joe Mbu, 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 announced the launch of their newest app, Blab, in early 2014 and in December 2014 a new version of Bebo launched as an avatar hashtag messaging app.
As of July 2013, it is owned and operated by its founders Michael Birch and Xochi Birch, who took over from Criterion Capital Partners after the company declared bankruptcy.
Bebo was founded by husband-and-wife team Michel and Xochi Birch in January 2005 at their home in San Francisco. The website name was bought by the founders, and the backronym "Blog Early, Blog Often" was invented to answer the question of what the name meant.
The website, at the height of its popularity, overtook Myspace to become the most widely used social networking website in the United Kingdom, eventually registering at least 10.7 million unique users. The site was also extremely popular in Ireland – at one point it claimed to have over a million Irish users, and data from Alexa ranked it as Ireland's most-visited site. Its popularity saw it sold to AOL for $850 million in 2008.
The site was purchased by AOL on March 13, 2008 for $850 million, with the Birches' combined 70% stake yielding a profit of $595 million from the deal. The BBC later described the AOL purchase of Bebo as "one of the worst deals ever made in the dotcom era", and it cost the then-CEO of AOL, Randy Falco, his job.
On April 7, 2010, AOL announced that it would either sell the website, or shut it down. This was mainly due to the falling numbers of unique users; Bebo users were moving to rival sites Facebook and Twitter. AOL said that Bebo could not compete with other social networking sites in its current state, and that the company could not commit to taking on the massive task to keep Bebo in the social network 'race'. It has been reported that AOL's finances were struggling.
...
Wikipedia