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Bebo Invites Users To Question Gordon Brown

By Andrew Redfern @ 6th July 2009 10:47 pm Bebo

Launching today Bebo’s Big Think is an opportunity for young people across the UK to say what they want for the future, for themselves, for their communities and for the country.

The idea emerged in a collaboration between AOL-owned Bebo – which is strengthening its efforts to champion the interests and wellbeing of its 9 million plus UK users and LIVE Futures, a pioneering non-profit social enterprise that gives young people the skills and resources they need to create their own media, including London’s biggest and best ‘by youth for youth’ magazine, LIVE.

Sam Conniff, co-founder of LIVE Futures said: “Bebo’s objectives of empowering their young members to collectively voice their opinions, wishes and concerns chimes perfectly with LIVE’s ethos of giving young people their own communications platforms – nobody knows what interests and engages young people better than young people themselves. Bebo’s Big Think is young Britain’s chance to say what they want for their future, and just as importantly, it’s an opportunity for the government to listen to them”.

In fact, in late July, five young people whose questions and ideas really strike a cord and represent the feelings of their peers will get to put them to the Prime Minister directly alongside 10 other young reporters, campaigners, entrepreneurs, apprentices and ambassadors at 10 Downing Street in a discussion hosted by T4′s Rick Edwards to be broadcast on Bebo and elsewhere at a later date.

The timing of Bebo’s Big Think coincides with the government’s own initiative to get the public involved in ‘Building Britain’s Future’. This presents a real opportunity to have the Government listen to the themes, ideas and questions that are raised in this debate and for Bebo’s young members to influence future planning and policy.

Gordon Brown said: “Building Britain’s Future is the start of a process to engage with people on the big issues facing our country today. Bebo’s Big Think is a great concept and I am really looking forward to hearing what people have to say.”

Sarah Gavin, VP Communications, AOL commented: “We want Britain’s youth to step forward and share their views on how we can craft a better, fairer future for all. It’s an opportunity for them to not only listen to their peers, but also be in with a chance to put their thoughts in front of some of the country’s leading politicians and policy-makers. We’re thrilled Gordon Brown has agreed to take part and urge teenagers out there to take advantage of the chance to give the PM some personal political pointers!”

Rick Edwards added: “The value of this is pretty clear. If we’re trying to build a better Britain for the future, then the people whose opinions really count, but aren’t often heard, are the young people who are going to be growing up and living in that same future.

Choices made now will have a profound effect upon them. So having Gordon Brown’s ear will be a fantastic chance for these young people to shape some of the government’s thinking. On a personal level I’m also hoping to get a photo with Mister Brown. I say ‘Mister Brown’ – hopefully by then we’ll be on first name terms. Swapping numbers, that sort of thing.”

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Bebo expands out into France, Italy, Germany, Spain and The Netherlands.

By Andrew Redfern @ 19th March 2009 5:42 pm Bebo

AOL have today announced they are launching Bebo in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and The Netherlands.

Bebo is a social networking site that “helps individuals discover what’s going on with their world and helps the world discover what?s going on with them”. Central to this is Bebo’s Lifestream platform which affords users a simple way to connect and keep up with everyone and everything and offer compatibilty with other popular sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Myspace.

The translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch marks Bebo’s continued international expansion. Bebo has already gained a strong following as a social experience in the U.K., U.S., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Poland with more than 22 million unique visitors worldwide.

Speaking about the launch Bebo Internation VP Nicole Vanderbilt,said “The proven success of our platform in the UK and Ireland positions us well to expand into these dynamic continental European markets. The social networking audience is growing rapidly and our new sites will allow local users to connect with other users, entertainment and brands, both globally and locally. The richness of our experience lies in the user?s ability to express him or herself ? as evidenced in our new Lifestory feature and in the ability to connect to people, media and brands through the Lifestream and our Open Media Platform”

On Bebo, users connect with both existing friends and with other users who share common interest and similar tastes. Through the Open Media platform and the Lifestream, they can discover and share the media they love wherever it lives. With the new international expansion, the social network is adding several channels of premium entertainment content from major local and global entertainment brands and emerging media companies.

To increase viral opportunities for media owners and publishers, Bebo has created a “Share on Bebo? (http://www.bebo.com/c/share/help) button for publisher sites, making it simple to implement and creating a two-way conversation between the publisher and Bebo platform. When a user shares his or her favourite media content, a status update will appear in the user?s “sayings” and in their “Lifestream?, virally spreading the news to his or her entire network and driving traffic back to the media owner or publisher.

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.

Bebo to identify, finance and share in the success of new music artists

By Andrew Redfern @ 3rd March 2009 5:14 pm Bebo

Bebo today announced a groundbreaking partnership with Slicethepie, a financing platform for recording artists. The new service will enable Bebo’s community to take on the A&R (artists and repertory) role, earning money by reviewing tracks, spotting new talent and ensuring the best Artists get put forward for financing.

Bebo music fans can then directly invest in the Artists in return for Artist access, a copy of the completed album, their name on the album sleeve and a share in the financial returns from album and single sales.

The partnership between Bebo and Slicethepie democratizes music artist financing by taking a complex process that is often controlled by a small number of people and making it accessible to a larger number of music artists and a larger number of music lovers.

The partnership also boosts Bebo’s ability to deliver a compelling social discovery experience for its users based on who they are, what they like, what their friends like and what people like them like.

David Courtier-Dutton, Slicethepie CEO, said “This unique partnership combines the passion and power of Bebo’s massive fan and artist community with Slicethepie’s proven filtering and financing platform to help artists get discovered in a faster and more equitable way than ever before. The combination of Slicethepie’s proven financing model with Bebo’s engaged community of music lovers gives these undiscovered artists a viable career path with unprecedented promotion and exposure on one of the most powerful social platforms in the world.”

Hal Stokes, Bebo’s Global Head of Music, explained: “Bebo is all about letting people connect with everyone and everything they care about. The relationship between music fans and artists has always been a close, emotional one.

Now, for the first time, fans can actually help break an act, help them record their first single and help them get discovered. With Slicethepie we can unearth the best ‘undiscovered’ talent on Bebo and fast track them to a sustainable career in music while strengthening their bond with their fans.”

Bebo users who participate in the review and rating process will be paid a small fee for every review left. The better they are at reviewing, the more they will be paid per review and the more influence they will have in advancing the career of the artist they are reviewing. Financed artists will retain the rights to their music and the majority of revenues from music sales.

It is anticipated that up to one artist a month will be financed as a result of the partnership. On top of the 15,000 raised from music fans to record an album, Bebo will provide every financed artist with a valuable promotional package to give them a genuine opportunity to launch their music.

In addition these artists will benefit from a ‘street team’ of hundreds of dedicated fans who have provided the finance, and can be mobilised to further promote their artist across the Bebo community and the wider web. The partnership is due to launch in March 2009.

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Bebo Suggests Slang Words for New Collins Dictionary

By Andrew Redfern @ 17th February 2009 5:57 pm Bebo

UK publisher HarperCollins has approached Bebo, the popular social media network, to help identify the most widely-used teenage slang words in the UK today.

Selected words which could be included in the 30th anniversary edition of Collins English Dictionary include bare (a lot of), seen (cool), mugged (take the mick), fiend (addicted to something) or hater which translates in today’s teen speak as a negative person.

The words were originally short-listed by a panel of 14-18 year-olds and have been divided into six categories; money orientated, ‘cool’, friends, girls/boys, street language and put-downs. Now Bebo’s 10.5 million unique users in the UK are casting their votes and views on which of the slang words they think should be included.

The most popular ones will be submitted to Collins, where a team of experts will research their origins and decide which will make the final grade for inclusion in the dictionary.

The in-depth research has revealed how a large number of slang words have been passed down from generation to generation. Timeless turns-of-phrase include cool, bruv (mate), grim (disgusting) and naff, which still translates as embarrassing.

Kate Burns, Managing Director and Vice President Europe, Bebo says: “Collins English Dictionary is so well respected, and the fact that it has approached Bebo reflects the growing value of the voice of our community. Our strong UK youth base and our ability to go directly to the heart of the community, means that Bebo and its audience is well placed to offer the most accurate assessment about popular street language.”

Cormac McKeown, Head of Content at Collins says: ‘We’re very excited about the prospect of working with Bebo. Teenage slang is notoriously hard to pin down if you rely on the normal channels; by the time it’s filtered into publications, broadcasts, and eventually mainstream speech, it’s too late, young people have stopped using it. The findings from the Bebo community will give us the chance to keep track of an exciting part of our language that usually goes unrecorded.”

Bebo Rolls Out Its New ‘Social Inbox’

By Andrew Redfern @ 17th December 2008 5:26 pm Bebo

Bebo today made it easier for Internet users to manage their online life by providing users with a one-stop “Social Inbox” that combines e-mail, social networking and media recommendations in one easy-to-use interface.

Designed to allow consumers to organise their lives online, Bebo’s Social Inbox makes it simple for users to keep in touch with the information and people who are important to them.

The Social Inbox aggregates feeds and updates from Twitter, Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube, AIM and others, so users can see at-a-glance what’s going on in their online world. The new experience also offers one-click access to Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, as well as user-selected media favourites, such as videos, music and photos. In addition, more than 100 million* users of AOL and AIM can now log directly into the Bebo service, http://www.bebo.com, using their existing screen names.

The new aggregation and update features delivered by Bebo go a long way toward solving the main problem facing consumers online, namely, a cluttered social networking experience with friends’ activity online scattered across the Web, living on multiple sites that require too much time and effort to access.

By letting users pool key updates and information from multiple sites in one place, Bebo builds on the foundations of social networking to become the first major network to give consumers a one-stop destination from which to experience life online.

“People want the ability to stay in-touch with their contacts in real-time wherever their friends may be across the Web. The current fragmented social networking environment makes keeping up-to-date with others increasingly difficult. Bebo’s new Social Inbox is our first step in solving this problem,” said Joanna Shields, President, AOL People Networks.

“By opening up our network to the most popular sites and allowing our users to pull in the best of the Internet, we are creating an environment where everyone can easily and effectively manage their online lives, no matter where the individual pieces reside.”

“By leveraging key resources and technologies from AOL and Bebo as well as from open APIs from leading social properties, we’ve been able to create a more relevant and open social experience,” said David Liu, Senior Vice President, AOL People Networks. “The Social Inbox aggregates the most relevant communications, community and content under one roof in an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Our users can keep in touch with friends and family across the Web and around the world from one single destination while at the same time continuing to explore the vast Bebo community.”

Today’s enhancements to Bebo.com, the first in a series of scheduled releases for early 2009, include:

* Social feed aggregation: Based on technology from newly acquired SocialThing, Bebo’s feed aggregation area enables quick and easy access to photo uploads, status updates and multiple online activities from key social networking destinations such as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, AIM and Del.icio.us on top of Bebo’s existing social feeds. Bebo’s Social Inbox allows social feeds to be organised in chronological order and grouped by person. A localised RSS feed reader also delivers the latest news and updates from around the globe including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and the Netherlands.

* E-mail aggregation: The Social Inbox gives consumers one-click access to the most popular e-mail services, including AOL and AIM Mail, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. Users will be able to preview their e-mail from multiple accounts without having to go from site to site.

* Media Favorites: A new recommendations engine built on the foundations of Bebo’s Open Media Platform delivers the most relevant online entertainment (including video, music, groups and games) into one place. Media Favorites are based on users’ stated preferences and aggregated data such as: what their friends are watching and listening to and what people like them like, subject to appropriate privacy settings.

This feed pulls in current Bebo content and group subscriptions, making it easy to get a quick snapshot of all personalised content. Bebo already boasts one of the most extensive online media offerings available, with programming from over 500 media** companies including MTV, ESPN, CBS and the BBC.

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Bebo launches online TV series with George Sampson

By Andrew Redfern @ 28th November 2008 5:12 pm Bebo

George and his record company SyCo Music (Sony BMG) are teaming up with the popular global social media network, Bebo, to produce a brand new online show Follow My Lead.

This online series will give an access all areas glimpse into George’s life behind the scenes as well as George teaching Beboers his signature moves.

George Sampson’s life is showing no signs of slowing down. He’s no stranger to the red carpet and crowds of screaming fans gather wherever he goes, whether performing on stage, appearing at film premieres, TV appearances or award shows. This is full on Georgemania of the high-pitched, glass shattering variety.

George exploded onto the Bebo scene immediately after winning Britain’s Got Talent in May and he currently has over 150,000 subscribers. Several exclusive competitions that ran exclusively on Bebo attracted huge numbers of entrants. A design a logo competition attracted 6000 fans in 5 days alone, and in 48 hours over 3500 had entered a dance competition. Last week George offered his fans the chance to attend a glitzy carpet premiere for his DVD through an exclusive competition on Bebo achieving a record 8665 entries.

George’s Bebo profile is full of up to the minute news, brilliant videos, photo galleries and more. It offers fan’s the unique chance to interact with George by leaving messages for him, uploading their own videos and pictures and entering competitions.

Each week in Follow My Lead George will teach viewers some of his trademark moves in easy-to-follow tutorials. Other episodes will follow George behind the scenes, attending red carpet events, going to dance rehearsals and launching his debut single.

About Follow My Lead George said “It is so exciting, I am always on Bebo and so are all my mates, so to join up with them for my new online series is brilliant.”

This series follows earlier successful partnerships between SyCo Music and Bebo, notably Leon’s Life (an online series following X Factor winner Leon Jackson) which is one of the most successful Open Media Channels on Bebo to date; building a huge following in a relatively short period of time. SyCo acts are dominating the Bebo charts, with George Sampson having remained in the top 5 acts since winning Britain’s Got Talent in May.

Sarah Gavin, Global Director of Communications for Bebo said “We recognized the simpatico between Bebo and SyCo’s roster early on – whatever these guys do is a success on Bebo. Great content is at the heart of Bebo’s offering and the label are ahead of many others in their willingness to explore and engage with the Social Networking space.

Ultimately they’ve wanted to be successful in this medium and have been and I have no doubt we’ll do a lot more with them”.

Ann-Marie Thompson, Head of Press at SyCo Music said “We are delighted to join forces with Bebo. The majority of SyCo music’s demographic are active on Bebo and so made sense for us to form a partnership with them. Working with Bebo, we are able to offer Beboers and music fans great access to new creative content and new ways of interacting with our artists in their own environment.”

Bebo Follows Facebook’s Lead and Becomes Developer Friendly

By Andrew Redfern @ 12th November 2008 1:55 pm Bebo

Global social media network Bebo (www.bebo.com), today announced that it has launched new engagement metrics and tools for application developers. At an event held in Mountain View, Calif., Bebo demoed new metrics and engagement tools to nearly 100 Java, PHP, and Rails developers who have created applications – from music and movies to gameplay and photo sharing – for the site’s 45 million users worldwide. Bebo has also announced JavaScript support in Beta for platform developers.

Bebo’s industry-first developer tools include new, valuable engagement metrics and reporting that analyze time spent, percentage of returning users, and time spent/total installs of applications. Bebo will use a portion of this newly available information to compute an Engagement Metric for developers, based on both percentage of returning users and time spent in an application.

All applications will be given a dynamic 1-10 ranking, and those that consistently hold the highest ranking will be rewarded with increased access to viral channels and visibility, opportunity to test Beta features. The first reward will be the ability to send changes feed items to non-app users.

To underscore its commitment to engaging applications, Bebo also announced today the B.E.S.T ‘Bebo’s Engage to Succeed Today’ Developer Challenge for new applications, with co-sponsor Sun Startup Essentials. Judges for Bebo’s B.E.S.T. contest are bloggers Dave McClure of 500Hats, Frank Gruber of SomewhatFrank.com, and Jesse Stay of StayNAlive.

The contest is open to all new applications uploaded to Bebo beginning today. Winners will be announced at a future Bebo developer event in early 2009, and will win prizes from Sun Microsystems and on-site promotion on Bebo.

‘Bebo’s Open Application Platform has allowed developers of all sizes to build engaging applications for Bebo’s international user base since its launch nearly one year ago,’ said Jessica Alter, Director of Business Development and Platform for Bebo. “At Bebo, we pride ourselves on having an extremely active and engaged community.

Now with the addition of new engagement metrics and tools, we are providing developers with better information and a tangible measure of engagement so that they can increase the performance of their apps, and maximize revenues. This adds great value to the overall platform, and really gives developers the tools they need to build applications that users will want to come back to.”

Today, developers joined Bebo engineers to hear firsthand how Bebo’s application platform was built, and learned about ‘Platform Migration’ from Blake Commagere of Ohai, deployment on OpenSolaris from Marina Fisher from the Sun Startup Essentials Team, and demos from five other application developers.

Sun Startup Essentials is offering free web hosting for Bebo developers for one year on Joyent’s cloud computing environment. To sign up and get free access the developers can go to http://www.joyent.com/developers/bebo. With this offer, developers can leverage the feature set of OpenSolaris to develop, debug and deploy Bebo social applications and scale from zero to millions of pages views.

“Sun Microsystems is a strong supporter of the developer communities and initiatives that encourage innovation through the use of open source applications and platforms,” said Sanjay Sharma, Director of Startups and Emerging Markets at Sun Microsystems. “We are excited to co-sponsor the B.E.S.T contest and to collaborate with Bebo and Joyent to provide Bebo developers access to Sun’s OpenSolaris platform and expertise in building large scale applications.”

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