Inside the internet’s social media graveyard Myspace and Bebo defined millennial adolescence. Are they about to make a comeback?
then gathered speed. Only three years previously, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp had bought MySpace for $580m. By 2011, it would be sold for a rumoured $35m. For a generation, the fall of Myspace was a cultural loss. It was the first online space for users to share and discover music. Artists that came to define the late Noughties found their fame on the site, from Lily Allen to Kate Nash. Upcoming musicians of the time uploaded tracks straight to the platform, pioneering music streaming before Spotify or Soundcloud.
40 million
Users that Bebo, which was unusually popular in Ireland for some reason, had at its peak. The founders now say a new Bebo (with new user accounts) will return this month and that Donald Trump is already banned.
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Cork s 96FM By Jamie Glass Image from Getty/Bebo Bebo co-founder Michael Birch has revealed some new features he hopes to include in an effort to revive his Social Network and take on Facebook and Twitter.
It was once the dominant social network in the early years of the phenomenon, along with its competitor MySpace.
Users would spend hours setting up their profiles just right and deliberating over their choice of top friends to feature on their page.
Now Bebo s co-founder has announced plans to revamp the retro social network in a bid to take on the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
Michael Birch and the notice heralding the relaunch IT is the social network site that has been the butt of jokes about old tech. Bebo overtook MySpace as the most popular social media site in the UK in 2008, and at its peak boasted 40 million users. Once the darling of young teenagers and most popular in the UK and Ireland, offering a customisable designs with a focus on blogs, photos and questionnaires, it was sold in 2008 to US tech giant AOL for £650million. Two years later as the rapid growth of Facebook crippled Bebo, AOL in effect closed it down, though users could still access the site.
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There aren’t too many things that scream mid-2000s U.K. culture quite like Bebo does. Launched in 2005 by California-based couple Michael and Xochi Birch, the social media platform an acronym for “blog early, blog often” became a sensation across the country amgonst early teens, overtaking the likes of MySpace and Facebook at the time and boasting more than 40 million members at its peak.
After selling the platform to AOL for around £623million (approximately $805million USD) in 2008, Birch regained the rights for £730,000 (approximately $1million USD) just a few years on, before finally selling Bebo to Amazon’s Twitch in 2019 for around £18million (approximately $25million USD).