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Bebo, one of the first social networking platforms, is making a return.
The website was in operation between 2005 and 2013, before making a brief comeback in 2014.
Today (January 29), Bebo.com has been relaunched to share the news of “a brand new social network” which will arrive at some point next month. A specific date has not yet been announced.
As per the new landing page, Bebo is “currently in private beta”. The revamped service will therefore only be accessible to a select group of invited guests, who will be required to enter a password to sign up.
Users who enjoyed the platform in its earlier forms, however, will not be able to relocate their ’00s-early ’10s content. “All old data and photos were lost many years ago and are not recoverable. Sorry,” a separate note reads.
Bebo’s logo remains the same and appears against a picturesque lake backdrop. A menu bar at the top of the screen – which includes the ‘About’, ‘Register’ and ‘Sign In’ tabs – is currently out of use.
At its most popular, Bebo – founded by husband and wife Michael and Xochi Birch – overtook MySpace in becoming the UK and Ireland’s biggest social networking website in the late 2000s.
Following the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other new networks, the company went bankrupt in 2013. Since then, TikTok has enjoyed huge success – surpassing two billion downloads of its mobile app worldwide (as of October 2020).
In 2019, Bebo was acquired by the Amazon-owned video streaming service Twitch.
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