Bebo Brings Back Its Founder, Tries Real Hard To Be Relevant
You hear a lot of jokes at MySpace’s expense about how it’s not relevant anymore, and how only losers still attempt to create a social presence via MySpace (I am of course excluding bands, who are by all rights the only users at this point who should, in fact, continue to use MySpace as a promotional tool). These jokes are, for the most part, justified. MySpace is hardly relevant. Though, to its credit, the new MySpace redesign is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen, bar none. The logo alone is the stuff of a branding student’s portfolio: far too sexy and obscure to be applied. Yet it was. Brilliant.
Anyway, enough about MySpace, relevant or not. What about Bebo? How come Bebo isn’t the brunt of social relevance jokes? Do you know anyone who has a goddamn Bebo account? I hear it’s big in Ireland, or something.
In an attempt to resuscitate itself after being dumped by AOL, Bebo has brought in the big guns: its founder, Michael Birch, who initially sold Bebo to AOL for $850 million. The idea is, of course, in Michael’s words, to make Bebo ‘relevant again’. I’ve gotta admit, I like Bebo’s never-say-die attitude, but in all honesty, I can’t see Bebo steamrolling Facebook in the foreseeable future.
