Bebo is down but who is left?

Bebo is the latest network to fail as the titans continue to increase their dominance around the world

AOL announced this week it will either sell or shutter their multi-million dollar social media website Bebo. Launched in the UK in 2005, it became a hit in its native land. During the social media land grab, which saw MySpace sell for $540 million and Bebo sell for $850 million, Bebo was a hot site that looked to be a contender for the next big thing. But just like a Highlander, there can be only one. With its imminent demise, it got me wondering about other social networking websites and how they are faring.

The social media landscape is littered with the skeletal remains of failed sites. Fear not, social media isn’t dying. But instead of being the wild west of the internet, the landscape is being tamed and defined in clearer terms. The new wild frontier is smartphone apps and we’re already seeing tough competition between Foursquare and Gowalla. It’s only a matter of time before we’re stepping over one of their corpse on our way to the next big thing.

Right now, the three big social networks are Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.  If we look at the past year, Facebook has added 54 million users, MySpace has lost 8 million and Twitter has added 13 million according to Compete.com. 

The three main social media sites received a collected 194 million visitors in February. That’s roughly 3% of the world's population visiting just three websites. While Twitter and Facebook are secure, MySpace, the little site that everyone wants to go away, is still going strong as it's found a niche catering to music and film fans. 

In comparison, Bebo received 1.6m unique visitors for February. It is a far cry from the big three, but what about Friendster and Orkut? Each of these sites are doing poorly and it’s surprising that Bebo is the first to go considering that Friendster only had 881k visitors in February and Orkut had 761k visitors. 

 

How long before these sites are also shuttered? Google is notorious for purchasing companies, neglecting them until they lose all their audience and then dumping them (e.g. Jaiku). Friendster shot out of the gate, but soon fell by the wayside as MySpace took over. In 2009, there was a shake down of micro-blogging sites as Pownce and ReJaw joined Jaiku on the trash heap. 

As Bebo circles the drain, can Orkut be far behind?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.