Bebo and Facebook: What’s the Hoopla?
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I’ve been hearing so much about bebo.com, and facebook.com on the web lately and I wanted to find out what they are for myself to make sure I wasn’t missing out. I wasn’t.
I’m a 30 something blogger with a personal website and a MySpace account. Not a techie by any stretch, but I feel like my social demographic has got to be a rather large piece of the pie. Bebo and Facebook are still somewhat fledgling social networking sites out there competing for MySpace’s minions while building customer bases of their own.
I thought it would be a good blog post to rate one against the other for those interested in trying them.
People in my general demographic, 25-45 years old, experienced in personal websites, blogs, and social networking, are likely to be less intersted in the “different” sort of “emo” and such like networking of the under 25’s. Specifically, we are likely to be interested in: 1. Its value as a contacts address book, 2. its value in networking tools, 3. Value in aesthetics and tweakability. Below are my findings:
1. Value as a contacts address book?
a. Bebo.com - Nothing special here. Bebo has a “find friends” function that searches for the friends of anyone that closely matches your criteria, but I was random matched with peole who looked out of my demographic. There are no “quick add” features for a toolbar or other. It’s just as simple to keep my Yahoo! Mail address book than to transfer to Bebo.
b. Facebook.com - When you sign up it walks you through finding friends at your past schools and colleges and your current workplace. Didn’t yield much for me, but it was a much better try at networking the new user.
2. Value in networking tools?
a. Bebo.com - Very self-contained. If you network, it will be with a stifled few within Bebo.
b. Facebook.com - As I have said, there is more in place to network the user than in Bebo. Still, there isn’t much to assist the user in networking as there is in MySpace. There is an option to browse networks by location but not by interest.
3. Value in identity?
a. Bebo.com - More fun than Facebook. They are most advanced in their photo album abilities. There is a part of it where you can develop a band page which attempts to mimic MySpace, but falls short. You do however get more songs that MySpace’s current offering of four. There are limited templates, nothing is very tweakable.
b. Facebook.com - Very plain looking. I got the feeling looking around it that it was marketed toward a college crowd that doesn’t want the flash of MySpace. Still, I have to think this format would grow boring after a while. I rarely visit my Facebook account.
In conclusion, I find both these sites very contrived from MySpace’s model. I don’t think either of them will ever draw MySpace minions away. They exist for people I guess who want something a little less earth shattering than MySpace but that they can simply keep a few pictures and their contacts on. In my forecast, you won’t see either of these 2’s CEO on the Forbes 50 anytime soon. But for now, they are there . . . and I will keep an eye on them from time to time. Maybe someone can tell me what the hoopla is about?
I'm Damien Riley, author and teacher. Here you'll find "think outside the box" posts on psychology and inspiration. 
two quick questions, and a bit of a follow-up response to your post…
2b.) what is the “assistance” that myspace provides?
3a.) aside from having to use external websites, creating a mock up page, and copying and pasting css-code to build a page in myspace, what features does myspace provide to help you customize your page?
with regards to the conclusion, aside from timing of launching when friendster was down, being created by a marketing company originally as a match.com type site, and the fact that everyone and their mom’s are on it, what did you mean when you refer to their “model.” technologically, they use dated cold fusion, and at this point in time their only way to keep up and monetize their pages is to buy up all the accessory sites (ie. photobucket, flektor, etc) to keep people interested.
in terms of the “hoopla”, I agree that facebook is very bland and bebo is very uk-pop/emo/kid-like, but each of them have their own features that attact people. at the end of the day, these sites are actually created to assist people with “networking” as opposed to the dating/ soft-porn and spam that is projected by myspace.
my guess is that people are starting to understand that there are much more efficient, cleaner, faster social networks out there than myspace and they are starting to get fed up with the spam and ever-chugging technology on myspace. as an over 25 year old blogger, it is very suprising to read that you feel myspace is better for networking eventhough it requires you to have accounts on up to 4 different sites just to maintain your page (photobucket, rockyou, blogger, imeem).
i definitely think myspace was GREAT with the timing of their site, but with sub-par technology, heavy relations with marketing companies, being owned by a VERY corporate parent-company, and the lack of individual controls on the site, I just don’t see the interest staying as high as it has been for the past few years.
Great comments, thanks for taking the time. I agree with your point that MySpace technology is archaic. When I observed Bebo and MySpace however, I didn’t see anything more tech savvy or integratable with other services such as the ones you mentioned.
I guess the real question is: How do we get the minions from MySpace to migrate elsewhere? Like you, I have a love/hate relationship with my MySpace page
myspace.com/damienrileytunes
I think in order to do that, there has to be something really good and Bebo/Facebook aren’t that unfortunately. Let’s hope something better emerges! There is some really cool stuff for blog promotion out there. Kinda like MySpace, but just for bloggers. I’m still waiting for someone to sell me on this Bebo stuff. That keyword is showing up in the top ten a lot lately.