Social Network Bebo Opens Doors In India

AOL People Networks on March 19 announced the launch of Bebo in India, and marked its entry into the Indian market with Hindi entertainment TV channel REAL.

Bebo is a San Francisco based social experience that helps individuals discover what’s going on with their world and helps the world discover what’s going on with them.

Bebo’s Lifestream platform affords users a simple way to connect and keep up with everyone and everything they care about irrespective of which medium they use or where the activity takes place, be it on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace or another site.

The new Bebo experience in India marks Bebo’s continued international expansion and follows launches in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and US Latino.

Bebo has already gained a strong following as a social experience in the UK, US, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Poland with more than 22 Million unique visitors worldwide.

“Working with premium partners such as REAL allows us to bring a wealth of entertainment to users in India from day one. Our platform allows users to connect with other users, content 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 to everyone and everything they care about,” said Nicole Vanderbilt, VP International, Bebo.

On Bebo, users can connect with both existing friends and with other users who share common interests and similar tastes. Through the Lifestream and Open Media platform, they can discover and share the media they love wherever it lives.

By partnering with Turner Broadcasting’s REAL, the social network is making several channels of premium entertainment content available to Bebo users in India.

According to Vidyuth Bhandary, Head – Marketing at RGBPL, “Continuing to strengthen Turner’s entertainment brands with pioneering partnerships in India, REAL’s alliance with Bebo will enhance consumer’s content appetite with a new touch point in the dynamic digital domain.

Bebo also plans to incorporate a number of media partners into its groundbreaking Open Media platform including Saavn. As the largest digital distributor in Bollywood, Saavn will allow users of easy access to a plethora of the latest releases, music tracks and music videos.

To increase viral opportunities for media owners and publishers, Bebo has created a “Share on Bebo” 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.

My Opinion
In my opinion Bebo is very, very active and agressive in launching new and compelling social and open mobile services. Take a look at their launch list and especially the pace of the launches. With its launch in India, Bebo might see its audience grow even faster.

But I don’t believe in the long term success. Why not?

Because Bebo is not special or unique and it will be blown out of the markets by Facebook. Next I do not believe AOL will add value and leverage it.

I expect do a MySpace alike scenario: AOL will probably sell Bebo. Or kill it.

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Source: Finchannel.