I logged into Bebo today to check out any new applications that had been added to the platform and I was prompted with a friend request. This time I was asked how I knew one of my friends just like I’ve been prompted by Facebook since the beginning. As I wrote in my definition of a social platform last week, social platforms must have a model for defining a user’s connections. As far as I know Facebook and Bebo are the only platforms that currently provide this functionality.
This new feature by Bebo shows how far of a lead Facebook has in the world of social platforms. Log into MySpace and you’ll see that they have begun copying just about every feature that Facebook has built into their platform. MySpace has added photo albums, photo tagging and even a newsfeed. The main problem with them (or any other social network) not having these features from the beginning is that there will be no way to measure the strength of the bond of any connection.
Over the course of the next twelve months we are going to witness a number of the top social networks mimic most of Facebook’s feature sets. I also believe that we are going to start seeing the opening of platforms thanks to the DataPortability workgroup. Eventually you will be able to add your contacts that have joined MySpace from your Facebook profile. For now, it is happening one step at a time and this update by Bebo is simplyt one event in the history of social platforms.
Update
It appears that this functionality has been present on Bebo for a while now. This was just the first time I had been presented with this box. Regardless, social platforms will still strive to mimic a lot of the features currently offered by Facebook and beyond.
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