It looks like mid-noughties social networking site Bebo is set to make a comeback this year.
According to a brand new Bebo.com, the site will relaunch sometime in February. However, it’s currently only accessible to those that have access to a private beta.
While this announcement seems to have popped up out of the blue, the Bebo brand was acquired by streaming giant Twitch back in June 2019, for a cool $25m. The deal saw the Amazon-owned purple giant snap up what was left of the Bebo IP and around 10 of its employees.
No further comment was made at the time, but Twitch made the acquisition in aid of developing Twitch’s esports sector, which may influence the design of the new Bebo. The site also disclosed that all data and photos pertaining to the previous version of the site were lost many years ago.
Modern history
Bebo was founded and launched in 2005 by Michael and Xochi Birch, and quickly became the most popular social network in the UK for a time, dethroning MySpace. In 2008, the site was sold to AOL for $850 million.
Users on the site began to decline rapidly due to the rise of Facebook, which saw Bebo passed over to Criterion Capital for $25 million in 2010, before being bought back by its creator in 2013 for $1m million.
In, 2018 the company launched a multi-feature streaming software, similar to XSplit. However, that was shut down in October 2018, six months prior to Twitch’s acquisition. Discord was also in the running to snap up Bebo, but was outbid by Bezos.
