About Bebo

Bebo, a backronym for “Blog early, blog often”, is an online social media network similar in format to MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, and Yahoo! 360. The site was founded in January 2005 by husband and wife team Michael and Xochi Birch. It was given a major relaunch in July 2005. Bebo can be used in many countries around the world including Ireland, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Kazakhstan and Australia. Bebo have recently launched a Polish version of the site which uses a different user database. There are also plans for French and German versions among others.

Bebo is the 85th most popular English-language website (at 1 June 2007) according to Alexa Internet. According to Hitwise, Bebo is the third most popular social networking website but has only a 1.18% share of the market. Bebo also announced on March 17 2007 that it was the most popular website in Ireland, however, as of October 7 2007, Bebo dropped to second, behind Google.ie. As of September 2007 Alexa ranked it as the 11th most popular site in the UK with MySpace occupying 9th place and Facebook 3rd place. In the U.S. however, it was not in the top 100 at that point. Bebo was also listed as the number one term most representative of search trends on Google in 2006. Bebo was aquired by AOL on March 13, 2008 for $850m (£417m).