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Orange Users Get Unlimited Bebo Access For £3 Each Month

Mobile service provider Orange and social network Bebo announced that Orange customers can now get unlimited Bebo access for £3 (6.1 US dollars) per month. This plan, called “Bebo Extra”, will enable users to comment on their friends’ profiles, send Bebo Mails and receive profile notifications via SMS, all at a single price.

Bebo is a hugely popular social network in the UK, and UK users love using SMS. Furthermore, Bebo already has a deal with Orange for the Bebo Mobile service, and they also have a Twitter-like service. This new plan makes it even easier for Orange users to reach their favorite social network through their mobile phones.

Or, as Katrien Barrat, Director of Multimedia and Convergence at Orange UK has put it, “The great thing with Bebo mobile is that we have found one more way to change our customers’ mobiles from a one-to-one communication device to a complete social networking tool, enabling people to engage in conversations, discover new interests and express themselves in a completely new way.”

As far as mobile access goes, Bebo is really trying hard, and since all these cool SMS gizmos are killer features for the European SMS-loving audience, we expect it to continue gaining ground over their competition, at least in the UK.

Source: www.mashable.com

New Zealand TV Network for Bebo

Bebo has penned an exclusive partnership with TVNZ, the New Zealand television network, for access to premium content. This marks the first such deal for TVNZ with an online social network.

TVNZ’s entertainment, news and current affairs content will be made available on Bebo. The deal includes access to the premium content for advertisers as well, making it a means for ad and content distribution across niche targets within Bebo’s large social network. The selling of display and video advertising will be limited to New Zealand, however, and no details indicating if these ads will be sold through Yahoo.

With Bebo’s market reach in New Zealand having doubled in the past year, it’s prime time for TVNZ to begin to market to Bebo users in a distribution partnership that’s become commonplace for social networks like MySpace and of course video-sharing networks like YouTube and others.

Source: www.mashable.com

The next Kate Modern is named Sofia

Looks like Bebo is putting together a regular line up for web series content. A new interactive drama series called “Sofia’s Diary” will air on Bebo this coming fall.

The series is from Sony Pictures Television International, and will include daily videos and text updates that will be posted on her Bebo profile. The show will combine real events with fictional stories, and keep viewers on their toes with real-time interaction with characters, in order to help direct the storyline.

This of course follows on the success of LG15 on YouTube and will join Kate Modern’s series on Bebo, which gained a lot of steam itself. The interactive story-telling approach that these new web series takes is proving to be a good way to engage users and keep them coming back for more.

Source: www.mashable.com

Windows Live Messenger to Power IM on Bebo

Bebo is partnering with Microsoft in order to use its Windows Live instant messaging service throughout the Bebo network. This marks the first time Microsoft has partnered with a social network to provide IM tools.

Now, users on Bebo can chat with friends within the Bebo network as well as import and export between its contacts on Windows Live and Bebo as well. This makes it more than just a partnership to let Bebo users chat with Microsoft’s instant messaging client–it’s also a merging to networks to some extent. As part of this partnership, Microsoft will place an instant messaging button on profiles that will let site visitors send an IM by clicking on this button. Another reason why this is a good match for both Bebo and Microsoft is the estimates that indicate that 90% of Bebo users already use Windows Live instant messaging services.

Microsoft is looking to move further into the social networking realm, and it’s also announced today that its Windows Live now offers developers a tool for web ID authentication. In related news, Facebook is now allowing users to send emails out to other email clients, moving it closer to the status of a portal.

Source: www.mashable.com

Bebo Overtakes MySpace in the UK

It's official, Bebo has overtaken MySpace to become the largest social network in the land. According to comScore’s July report, Bebo has 10.7 million unique users, compared to MySpace’s 10.1 million unique users, in addition to being the most visited social network in the UK.

Gaining on MySpace in pretty much all fronts, Bebo has also been ranked as the second most engaging website in the UK with 8.7 billion page views. Google has the number one spot, with 8.8 billion page views in the UK. And don’t forget about Facebook - it’s third in line for social networks in the UK, and it’s been gaining steam in the last year as well, having a rather successful reach for its global strategy.

Author: Kristen Nicole
Source: www.mashable.com