Bebo

Bebo launches a major redesign of the user’s home this morning, his first since being acquired by AOL for $ 850 million this year. The changes give us an idea of what we could expect from Bebo for the future, and as you might expect from the network, which is now part of AOL’s tight integration with AIM, and easy access to e-mail , multimedia content, and a little twist, aggregation FriendFeed variety of social characteristics.

I think that IM is the ultimate social graph - contacts organized into groups that may contact you in real time. And while AOL may not be in its ability to deposit money into this social network at the beginning of the boom, AIM more than 28 million unique users per month according to comScore. Bebo is the golden goose, which finally makes this concept is a success? Here is a look at what they are up to:
Instant Messaging

Bebo is now possible to AIM screen name with your site and your password. And, similar to other initiatives portability of data, it means that you will be able to see which of your friends already use the AIM Bebo, with an immediate social network, if you access the site for the first time. You can also chat with friends through a friend that the list was in the Bebo interface, which together friends from both Bebo and AIM.

Social aggregation

Back in August, AOL, a much smaller acquisition - FriendFeed competitor social Thing. The service - which is still in private beta, when AOL bought - it is an important part of the page, so to see updates to your Bebo friends from other services like Twitter, Flickr and del.icio.us. Bebo to consider these plans to you for updates from friends who do not necessarily use Bebo, so you can see all the updates in one place.

E-mail

When you check your e-mail is apparently quite simple in itself, Bebo has decided to include in their home page the user. You can check the accounts, AOL, Gmail or Yahoo Mail, with support for users of Microsoft Exchange e-mail is expected early next year. This is not fully functional Web-mail, but it is only a notification of new messages. This seems a little ‘of “a better mouse trap” philosophy of portals such as AOL and Yahoo, but still, it might be useful for those who do not keep e-mail with 24 × 7 in a special register.

Multimedia

A big advantage that are part of parent company AOL Time Warner is that Bebo has access to a variety of multimedia content. Bebo users can subscribe to this content, and now the new draft recommendations based on their interests and what are their friends, or just listen. In contrast to the target site of a video, like Hulu, Bebo hopes that this tool is more social discovery - the search for new content to see, based on what your social network is consumed.

Final thoughts

I like it when it comes to Bebo. While the social network is huge, the United Kingdom, United States, is relatively small compared with giants Facebook and MySpace. Instead of trying to work directly with the social networks, which are the concepts that successfully with the so-called early adopters - such as streaming of life - and try a broad audience.

And while AOL already tried in vain to maintain its dominance of instant messaging in a social networking platform (AIMPages) at present do not have the meat of a high-level site as Bebo behind. This time, Bebo is also heavily involved in the actual target software that is much more drive adoption. While you can certainly question whether Bebo was worth the high price is at least something to ensure that there is a coherent strategy in place to come around.