Bebo losing the race in social networking

The once popular social networking site, Bebo, isn’t faring so well against it’s competition: Facebook and Twitter. Bebo is owned by AOL but the company is in talks of whether or not they should sell the site and end their involvement entirely.

Bebo reached it’s highest peak of popularity in 2008 and has slowly been plummeting since then. I’m an avid social-networker and I have to admit that I’ve rarely heard of Bebo. Flashy sites like Facebook and Twitter have sucked me in with their chat options and sleek new designs.

According to this article, Bebo was the second largest social-networking site in the UK, after Facebook. In February 2008, the once largely popular site had 22.9 million visitors and saw an increase in visitors until April 2009. Facebook currently has over 400 million active users, with more than 50% logging daily into the massively popular site.

AOL has told it’s employees that they are no longer able to fund the website and plan to sell or close Bebo down completely before the end of 2010. Their slow demise doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Sources closely affiliated to the company suspect that strategic changes and a lack in funding is what led to their tough decision.

It seems that any site similar to Facebook has trouble holding the interest of its users. Who knows that the future holds for social networking. Sites like Bebo are a dime a dozen and just maybe the underdog will prevail over Facebook one day. Don’t hold your breath though..

[Source: Guardian.co.uk]