Facebook and MySpace threatened by Bebo’s ‘Open Media’ platform
By Dave Parrack
Bebo today launched their new ‘Open Media’ initiative, immediately differentiating themselves from social network rival Facebook, but setting themselves on a possible collision course with MySpace.
At the moment, Bebo is a definite third in the battle for social networking superiority, with both MySpace and Facebook much more popular. But if Bebo president Joanna Shields has her way, the new online video and music strategy she pitched at BAFTA in London could see that changing.
The ‘Open Media’ initiative has two basic elements. One allows users to share their favourite videos and music on their profiles, and consequentially share it with others on the site. The second, and more exciting prospect is the open source style invite to producers to build their own web presence on the site, uploading original material for the 40 million Bebo members to view and listen to.
Media companies can now put their creations on the site, and importantly, keep any revenue this creates. The bigger players, such as the BBC, ITN and Channel 4, who have all already signed up for the service, can use their own media player, and sell their own advertising, with no share of the revenue going to Bebo itself.
Bebo President Joanna Shields told Reuters:
“Every media company is looking for better ways to deliver their content online. By opening our platform to media owners, who gain free access to our community while retaining control over their brand, their content and their revenues, we are creating valuable new inventory for advertisers and a new business model for the entire media industry.”
This is a massive departure from the Facebook strategy of courting web developers to put their software applications on the site. It does however echo MySpace’s position as a self expression portal. It’ll be interesting to see if this changes the positioning of the social networking sites, and if this new direction for Bebo sees it take off in North America, where it is largely ignored at present.
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February 4th, 2008
Yeah, we’ll see where it goes with this whole open expression platform. I’m sure external resource sites would love the idea if it caught on, but will it? I don’t think it’s anything innovative so probably not, but who knows. Maybe if they catered to the band and music crowd it might. That’s a pretty big niche they could market to that Facebook really isn’t helping out much.
March 12th, 2008
Late reply but i just saw this and that looks pretty awesome. I’m still rooting for Myspace and Facebook though.