So with much fanfare, and jazzy Jamie Cullen, Bebo unveils its new content channels. With so many big announcements from websites lately, are they all just blending into each other?
Bebo's latest sex-up involves offering professional companies their own customisable channels, so they can publish selected content that users can, in turn, collect and watch on their own profiles.
Fifteen TV and music companies, the latter focusing on music video, are launch partners for the UK and US: BBC, Channel 4, ITN, BSkyB, Turner, CBS, MTV and ESPN, plus newer companies Last.fm, SumoTV, FabChannel, Premium TV, Crackle, JibJab and Next New Networks.
One new tweak is that channels can embed their own existing video players on Bebo, bringing in any existing on-screen advertising and keeping 100% of that revenue. For those that don't have on-screen ads, Bebo will offer its own video platform and advertising supported by Yahoo, and it's worth noting that few of these partner companies do have their own on-screen ads at the moment.
It won't have gone unnoticed that Facebook launched a raft of advertising options last week, one of which is the option of what is effectively a branded channel. Bebo's director of strategy and operations, Evan Cohen, said it was "a weird coincidence" that Facebook launched their offering only last week, and that Bebo has actually been working on this since June.
Slapping brands on social networking sites has been handled in an extremely clumsy way for the past year or so, with both sides still trying to work out how to make money out of this vast audience and labyrinth of detailed demographic information.
Social networks are built for individuals, so shoehorning faceless companies into these spaces doesn't work - the language and the infrastructure of the site just isn't built that way. I'd say companies either need to be fronted by people that can talk about and engage people with what they do in an open and interesting way (very hard to do) or simply be presented as a company.
Bebo has focused on this, setting these content companies up so that users add themselves as "fans" rather than as friends. It's only a detail, I admit, but an important one that represents brands more accurately. As Cohen was quick to point out, there's no way of differentiating your friends from companies (on MySpace, for example) so they all merge into one.
As for the media companies, it's a no brainer, really. As Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone recently said, "The more platforms our content is on, the more numerous our revenue streams."
For UK audiences, Bebo's video platform ranks extremely well amongst its rivals. The BBC, Channel 4 and ITV (not on board with Bebo yet, but not long, I'm sure) already offer video on their own sites, but an online audience will be far easier to nurture in the centralised, teen-friendly Bebo interface. It's more targeted than YouTube's channels, and has a better range of suppliers than iTunes' TV shows. And those cost £1.89 each compared with free, on Bebo. It could even help the site expand beyond its younger 13-24 user base.
Bebo has, at last, got one up on Facebook. is it about to grow up?
PS I strongly recommend the BBC's Armstrong and Miller Show, here. Could we have some more now please?
