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Bebo Expands Media Operations, Launches Web Series

Posted by Nick O'Neill on August 20th, 2008 4:54 PM

Bebo LogoIf you have been paying attention to the activities among social networks over the past year, you would have noticed that Bebo is one of the few networks that realizes it’s a media company. While MySpace has announced a music service and imeem has expanded their dominance in social music, Bebo has been focusing on distributing original content. Today Bebo announced the launch of Model.Live. This new show is sponsored by Express and will air on Vogue.TV and Bebo.

The show will reveal “the truth about how professional models live.” I’m sure it will be thrilling! If you are running a social network and don’t think that you are in the media business, you are probably fooling yourself. Mark Zuckerberg is known for positioning Facebook as a technology company but as Kara Swisher said in her interview with Mark and Sheryl Sandberg, Kara kept trying to push Mark into admitting Facebook’s a media company.

As expected, Mark didn’t relent but it is clear that social networks have become an alternative to other media channels such as television. While you can argue that both television and social networks can be used in conjunction, I see them as an alternative because its rare to see a television show leverage a social network to complement itself. Users spend a significant amount of time consuming content on the sites and hence, they are media companies.

The job of social networks is to help people connect and ultimately to provide engaging content (which is typically created by the users). Nobody ever said that the content can’t be original, “high quality” content. Do you see social networks as media companies? What opportunities do you see for original content on social networks?

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    It is my core belief that people go onto social networks for a mixture of original and conventional content (Pro Football highlights, Coldplay music videos, etc.). That being said, I believe more and more people are interested in original content, especially when it is someone whom they know directly, or is from their hometown, etc. The novelty of knowing that the content was made by someone like them, is high quality and was not filmed at a professional studio or backlot, is not going to go away anytime soon, it will only grow.

    Social networks can benefit by putting the original content in overlapping categories, making it user-friendly to find exactly the type of content one looks for with the click of the 'enter' button. This will expand the time spent online for each social network and will allow companies to sponsor certain categories, such as 'Football', 'Music', 'Martial Arts', etc.

    Undoubtedly, the push to get more users to post original material will only help the Social Network to maintain high traffic and attract more people to its site.

    I believe as it becomes easier and easier to post animation, video, music, etc. to these sites, the more people will do it, at which point, traditional media will be affected (it already has been).

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