E-business Briefing from E-consultancy features insight and opinions from top e-business consultants, CEOs and senior management on the issues they are facing as well as selected e-business white papers.
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| Bebo's Michael Birch on social networks and startups | ||||
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In this issue: 1. Bebo's Michael Birch on social networks and startups 2. The Watercooler... this week's blog stories 3. UPDATE: Internet Statistics Compendium (August 2006) 4. JOBS: Internet and e-commerce jobs 5. Top forum post: Industry average for single page visits 6. Top forum post: 'Implied' or 'nominated' opt-ins |
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| 1. Bebo's Michael Birch on social networks and startups | ||||||
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Bebo’s CEO and founder Michael Birch has been the driving force and chief architect behind the development of six consumer web sites over the last decade. In 2001, he co-founded word-of-mouth marketing site BirthdayAlarm.com as a simple way to remember birthdays. The idea caught on, and today the site provides more than 40 million members an assortment of e-greeting cards and services. Following this, he started Ringo.com, one of the first social networking sites launched in 2003. The site was later sold to Tickle.com and is now owned by Monster.com. Birch has a BSc in Physics from Imperial College, London. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) How clear was the purpose of the website – and its business model - when your launched Bebo? Was it something that evolved or has it gone according to an exact plan? As experienced technology entrepreneurs we did have a plan and we have stuck very closely to it. All ideas evolve and we have many new ideas moving forward. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Can you identify any factors or a time when Bebo seemed to reach a tipping point? Social networks are all about critical mass and it took Bebo around two months after its launch in July 2005 before we hit that critical mass; after which it grew at around 10% a week. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) How are you coping with scale? What are the big challenges with becoming so successful, so quickly? Scaling issues have prevented many Social Networks from growing. We planned for these issues when first developing Bebo, and although we’ve had some teething troubles it has not impacted our growth. Scaling continues to be a major focus for the company. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Did you ever imagine that social networking would become such a large part of the next wave of the internet, or did Bebo simply come along at the right time? Bebo is only a year old and by the time we launched it was already very clear that social networking was changing how the internet is used. The challenge for Bebo was whether we were too late to become a player however, the benefit of being late into this market was that we could launch a second generation social network without many of the legacy issues that other social networks had developed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) What security measures do they have in place to prevent minors from joining? Unfortunately the internet doesn’t have any intrinsic methods for validating users. We follow best practices with regards to minors and are active in finding and deleting the memberships of anyone who may try and register who is a minor. We are constantly evolving our systems and practices, collaborating with experts in a variety of fields (we are part of the Home Office Task Force on Social Networking and are working with education and law enforcement agencies from around the world) and we will continue to do so to maintain Bebo as a safe online environment. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) How much of a concern is it that Bebo could disappear as quickly as it emerged, given the fickle nature of young consumers? It’s critical that Bebo keeps evolving to maintain consumer interest. We are still at the very early stages of development for the site and you will see many significant changes over time. Continued innovation will ensure a loyal membership.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) What do you think would prevent young people from switching their networks to other sites which come on the scene? Is it to do with loyalty and power of the brand or is it simply the inconvenience of moving to a site where you have to start your network afresh? There is an inconvenience in moving, but this alone does not stop users from trying other social networks; most users have multiple memberships. Ultimately they will gravitate to and stay with the best site, Bebo has to ensure that it is that site. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) How do you strike the right balance between making hay from advertising revenues while the sun is shining, while keeping ads as unobtrusive as possible? We strike this balance via Bebo engagement marketing which is how leading brands are engaging with consumers online. For Beboers it means great content from brands that are not simply advertising, but really connecting with their audiences. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Do you subscribe to the view that social network users are happy to interact with brands on the site (as put forward by a MySpace executive)? Or do you think that young people have the same kind of hatred of marketing messaging as geeks? Bebo engagement marketing takes it to the next level by enabling users to quickly discover, interact with and share the brand content that appeals to them. If done right, the youth today become fully engaged with the advertiser’s message, and if done wrong, they will turn off to it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10) How do you quantify the value of advertising on Bebo compared to other sites where users might have deeper wallets? Advertisers looking to reach the 13-30 year old demographic must look to Bebo today. It’s where this age group is hanging out. A recent study concluded that this demographic spends more than $500 billion in the US alone, so it’s a rather large and deep pocketed demo (www.marketresearch.com). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11) What sort of brands and sectors spend the most money advertising on your site? The entertainment industry has been the quickest to jump on Bebo engagement marketing, and we recently launched cars for Disney in Ireland. Other successes include the recent NSPCC campaign which really reached and impacted with the Beboer audience. We have also just closed a very large deal with a leading TV station in the US to launch a new TV show this fall and there are dozens of deals in the pipeline ranging from movie premiers to mobile phones, to clothes and autos, and much more… -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12) Can traditional brands such as newspapers use social networking to their advantage? Does Bebo have a partnership strategy with Big Media companies? We are looking at the possibilities in this area and where it makes sense are speaking to major media companies regarding potential partnership activity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13) What technologies will be able to harness social networks in the future? We have just launched Bebo Bands which has consumed much of our focus. We are also looking at different solutions for Bebo mobile as a major future initiative for us. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael was interviewed by Chris Lake, editor, E-consultancy ( chris@e-consultancy.com ). |
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| 2. The Watercooler... this week's blog stories | ||||||
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This week we have mostly been blogging about...
Group calls for AOL search data probe
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| 3. UPDATE: Internet Statistics Compendium (August 2006) | ||||||
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The August update is now complete - 155 pages, 240 sources, probably the most comprehensive internet stats report available today. What's new? Sections updated: blogging, search, online communities, online retail and e-commerce, email, rich media, silver surfers, video sharing and music piracy.
View White Paper / Report » |
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| 5. Top forum post: Industry average for single page visits | ||||||
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"We have a client who's homepage accounts for 50% of their single page site visits. The rest are evenly spread throughout the site so the homepage is in the lead by miles... Anyone have a few on what an average level of single page visits might be?"
View Forum Message » |
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| 6. Top forum post: 'Implied' or 'nominated' opt-ins | ||||||
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"Clearly opt-ins can only be provided by the user, rather than nominated or implied as part of someone else's preferences. With this in mind, what would Best Practice dictate can be done with extra email addresses submited by one customer during a group booking purchase?"
View Forum Message » |
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