Webware

AOL-owned social network Bebo announced Monday that it has launched a U.S. site for Latinos. According to the company executives, they decided to open a version of its site catering to the Latino community after enjoying success in offering a similar experience to those in the U.K., Ireland, Poland, and elsewhere.

Along with the launch of the new site, Bebo also announced that it has partnered with Hearst Magazines Digital Media and AOL Latino to incorporate offerings from both companies into Bebo. Hearst will be providing interactive content syndicated from its MisQuince Magazine, and AOL Latino will give users access to music and entertainment. The new site is live now.

Aviary, a company that provides browser-based design apps for free, announced Monday that it has acquired Digimix.com, a company that offers an audio-editing Web app called Digimix. According to the Aviary, it plans to incorporate Digimix into its own suite of applications. Digimix was created with Adobe Flex and Flash technology and can mix 15 tracks in real time directly in a browser. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Mozilla reported on its Labs blog last week that it has developed improvements for its Firefox tab system. According to the company, it has added two new features for beta users to test out: a quick-access bar and contextual actions. The new quick-access bar will make it easier to open a tab and enter a URL. Contextual actions will allow users to use a one-click action that will open a URL sooner or open a closed tab quickly to recover it.

Online radio service Slacker has added a new station called "BlackBerry at SXSW 2009 Radio." According to the company, the station will stream acts from SXSW 2009, including Glasvegas, Cold War Kids, Ra Ra Riot, Okkervil River, Fastball, The Decemberists, Youth Group, and more. The station is up and running now, and is available only on the Web and on mobile devices like the BlackBerry and iPhone.

AOL has been fairly criticized for its purchase of Bebo in 2008 for $850 million. Since the acquisition, Bebo has been rolled into a group at AOL called People Networks. As we wrote yesterday, Bebo now has spiffy new features. But that doesn't make it worth $850 million.

I sat down with Joanna Shields, president of AOL People Networks, about the division's longer-term strategy. Shields was brought in by Bebo's venture investors to "package and sell" the company, she told me. She obviously did that, and quite capably.

"We sold at the top of the market," Shields said. She's stayed there to make the acquisition pay off for AOL, and there are clearly a lot of people who are curious about her plans for doing so.

The goal for the People Networks group, which includes Bebo, AIM, ICQ, SocialThing, Yedda, and Goowy Media, is to "connect people with everything they care about," Shields days. Before she came to AOL via the Bebo acquisition, she says the various social properties in AOL were operating as islands. To an extent they still are, but she's trying to bring all the pieces and parts together into a system that's useful for people, and that will pay back for AOL.

That goal to connect people explains why the team is evangelizing the social aggregation features of Bebo so strongly. People are on a lot of networks, not just Bebo. Shields realizes, though, that becoming another social aggregator is not the ticket to riches. It's useful, but you don't become Facebook by aggregating Facebook.

Joanna Shields

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET Networks)

AIM is the key
For the native audience that can drive Bebo and AOL forward, the company will rely on AIM and ICQ. AIM, which has 94 million global users, should have been AOL's social network, I said to Shields and to David Liu, GM of AOL People Networks and the leader of the AIM project. "It should have been our Twitter, too," Shields said.

As AOL announced yesterday, AIM users will be getting Bebo's more developed profile pages. In April an "integration version" of AIM will be released that will combine the AIM and Bebo instant messenger networks. Mid-year, a "revolutionary" new AIM will emerge that will allow access to not just AOL's own instant messaging clients, but others as well. I told Liu I use Adium on my Mac and Digsby on my PC (both are apps that support multiple instant messaging platforms, including Facebook's), and he told me that the new AIM client will be able to replace those. Also, "We'll have a better version of Twitter inside it," Shields said.

Shields indicated that there are no more social service acquisitions coming, so it looks like AOL will be building these new services with the people and companies it already has.

Liu told me that one of the key factors to AOL's future social success is the desktop client. "I can't say enough about how strategic it is have the client." Shields added, "It's that always-on pulse. It's a multiplier."

The group will continue to support both Web-based and mobile AIM clients, but they believe that having the rich client app is vital to staying in front of users.

AOL's People Networks group is aiming for openness. "We want to out-open everybody," Shields says, and indicated that upcoming products will support both OpenID for login and OAuth for third-party access. I did note that some of the products announced yesterday weren't completely integrated even with AOL's own products (the Life story function doesn't read in items from the Lifestream, for example), and she admitted that the integration among the different groups and products is a work in progress.

Worth $850 million?
Before talking with Shields and her team, I felt that AOL's Bebo strategy was scattered: I saw a lot of feature improvements, but no knock-out vision. After talking to Shields, I'm still not convinced that AOL has a killer social strategy.

The company is doing the right thing by finally trying to leverage its strong instant message platform, AIM (and also ICQ) and by taking good features from Bebo and layering them in to AOL. It's also smart to make Bebo and AOL more interoperable with other networks. These are solid moves and should help keep the AOL social products relevant.

But none of what I heard sounded like a threat to Facebook in terms of users, or to Twitter or Friendfeed in terms of innovation.

AOL continues to upgrade the Bebo social network it bought in 2008, layering in more functionality from the social data aggregator SocialThing it also acquired that year.

In December, we covered Bebo's new Social Inbox, which gathers social updates from your friends on other services and shows them on your Bebo home page. There's also a new feature, Lifestream, which will collect data from the Bebo user's external sites and put them all into one data stream that any Bebo friend can see. This feature is reminiscent of the social network aggregation function in FriendFeed.

AOL on Monday is announcing several more enhancements to the Bebo service, although not all of them will be available to users immediately.

The Lifestory feature puts all your Bebo activities into a flashy timeline.

(Credit: AOL)

Lifestory is glitziest of the new features. It gathers your Bebo photos and events, and puts them into a album player that sorts them into chronological groups. Basically, it makes a fancy widget out of your life.

Bebo is getting somewhat granular privacy controls, with a feature called the Social Slider. It allows you to tag every element on the social network as appropriate for friends, family, or your "inner circle." This is a welcome, if not unique feature, although calling a control with three levels a "slider" is a bit misleading. The feature can also be used to filter incoming messages to just people close to you.

The Lifestream function collects social activity data from people around the Web, even if they are not Bebo users.

(Credit: AOL)

Bebo's native instant messenger and AOL's AIM are getting integrated, so Bebo users will be able to communicate with AIM users. AIM users will also soon get Bebo profiles, which area bit richer. The company is also promising a new instant messenger experience. A release sent to journalists says, "In Q2 we will take this one step further, providing AIM users with a radically new experience for real-time communication with everyone and everything they care about." Perhaps the company is eyeing to compete with Meebo -- or maybe there's an acquisition we'll hear about (but to be clear, that's just speculation on my part).

The service is also getting a feature called Stories. It sounds like it will be a form of group blogging, oriented around events. But AOL is not saying much more about it, aside from promising a March release for the feature.

AOL execs clearly want to differentiate the Bebo network from other social nets, especially Facebook and MySpace. However, the protests sound strained. Bebo is a social network. It has different features, but it competes with the big networks (Bebo claims 22 million users versus Facebook's reported 175 million). AOL does own several interesting social data companies, though. In addition to Bebo and Socialthing, the company also owns the Q&A service Yedda, and it acquired the widget company Goowy Media. It has all the pieces and parts to make innovative and interesting social applications. All it really needs is users.

(Credit: Compete.com)

The blogosphere simply loves to slurp up social-networking traffic stats, and on Monday we got a nice tasty serving of them with some new numbers from Compete.com for the month of January. The results? Facebook is in the lead, with about 68 million unique visitors, well ahead of MySpace's 58 million. (The two are pegged at 1.1 billion and 810 million page views, respectively.)

This may be the first survey we've seen that puts Facebook ahead of the News Corp.-owned MySpace in U.S. traffic. It also puts Twitter as the third-biggest social-media site in the country by total page views, with only about six million unique visitors but a whopping 54 million views.

Compete's numbers are interesting, because they often are pretty different from other analytics firms'. Here are some clarifications, explained to CNET News in an e-mail sent by Compete's Andy Kazeniac: These are numbers stemming entirely from Web browser data in the U.S. That means that you won't be pulling in any international numbers, where most of Facebook's users are now, or data from widgets or third-party applications, which are how many avid Twitter users access the service. That means that it's likely that Twitter's reach is bigger than the numbers indicate.

What's also intriguing is that there are a few social-media sites, like Flixster and LiveJournal, with relatively low unique visitor counts but proportionally very high page view counts, indicating that they probably have smallish bases of very loyal users.

Also pulling in notable numbers are LinkedIn, with about 11 million unique users, Classmates.com, with about 17 million, and Reunion.com, with slightly under 14 million. On the other end? AOL's Bebo, an $850 million purchase, which Compete.com clocks in as having just shy of three million unique visitors. True, its biggest user bases are in the U.K. and Ireland, but that's not good considering the price tag.

Still, statistics are like tequila shots. Always take 'em with a few grains of salt and a slice of lime, and be warned that they may give you headaches.

Zoho announced on Wednesday that in light of Google suspending Google Notebook, it has enhanced its own service, Zoho Notebook.

According to the company, it has added a Google Notebook import function, which allows users to import all their Google Notebooks into Zoho's software. The company also added the ability to link between notebooks, record audio and video, and chat with other Zoho users through a new instant-messaging application built into the software. The updated Zoho Notebook is available now.

Mixx, a Digg-like social site that caters to a more "mainstream" audience, has inked a deal with online advertising agency Federated Media to handle all its advertising endeavors. Mixx now joins Federated Media's group of content sites that employ the company to connect them with advertisers.

Federated Media's executives said they will work closely with Mixx representatives to develop "conversational marketing executions" that will cater to Fortune 500 brands. Advertising rates have yet to be determined.

OneSeason.com, a company that offers virtual goods and a gaming platform for sports enthusiasts, announced that it has secured $3.5 million in a Series A round of financing that was led by Charles River Ventures. The company's founder, Mike Sroka, said he will use the funding to build out the site's virtual-goods marketplace and enhance features in its social-gaming network.

Use of Twitter in the United Kingdom has increased tenfold year-over-year, according to a report from market research firm Hitwise. According to the report, "Twitter ranked as the 291st most visited Web site in the U.K., up from a ranking of 2,953 (in 2007), for the week ending January 19, 2008. U.K. Internet traffic to the Web site has increased by 974 percent over this period." Hitwise also said Twitter is still growing at a rapid rate, which is partly due to British celebrities publicly joining the site.

Social network Bebo on Thursday announced that it has partnered with Motionbox, a service for sharing personal videos, to bring video-publishing tools to Bebo's users. Those who wish to use the Motionbox platform on Bebo will have access to its basic membership, which includes online-editing tools and secure storage. Bebo users who want to post high-definition videos will need to sign up for Motionbox's subscription service and pay $29.95 per year.

Wednesday, I discussed all the features Twitter's competitors offer that it doesn't. Now I'm back with a discussion about Facebook and all the features its competitors offer that it doesn't. Will it take the advice and start rolling them out?

Bebo: Sharing an artist's dream
Maybe Facebook's groups feature is enough for some writers and musicians to come together and share their work, but I don't think the social network does enough.

Bebo, on the other hand, doesn't just allow users to band together around similar interests; it provides an author's nook where budding novelists and prospective journalists can show off their talents by uploading their work and sharing it with the community.

Granted, the ability to upload a Great American Novel or a poem written in a moment of despair isn't necessarily the most attractive feature to most social-network fanatics, but having the option to upload that material highlights Bebo's willingness to provide its users with more than just a community to share interests. In fact, Bebo's author's nook provides an outlet for individual members of the community to express themselves, which is a key feature in any social network. That's not to say Facebook doesn't embrace individuality, but something as simple as an area for artists only enhances an already attractive service by providing those users with another way to have exposure in the community. I don't see what's holding Facebook back from doing the same thing.

Friendster: It's all about design
What's so bad about designing your own profile page? Facebook's policy of forcing every user into a single profile design befuddles me. Sure, some MySpace pages are gaudy and downright ugly, but that doesn't mean users shouldn't be allowed to express themselves in their profiles.

That's why I enjoy Friendster's profile layout tool, which allows users to create their own, personalized profile page without conforming to the boring design Facebook forces them into. They can modify colors, choose design schemes, and generally create a more aesthetically pleasing profile than what's possible on Facebook. In fact, I think it's safe to say that Friendster's profile production functionality is the best on the market and provides users with enough tools to design unique profiles without giving them too many options to turn the entire service into a MySpace freak show.

Social networks are all about being "you" and connecting with other individuals who want to do the same. I think profile design enters into that mix.

MySpace: Singing all the way to the bank
MySpace and Facebook are often compared when we discuss social networks, but that doesn't mean they should be deemed equals. In fact, MySpace's Music integration not only makes it an attractive social network, but it also makes Facebook's service look comparatively boring.

MySpace Music is one of the best streaming music services on the Web. Allowing access to millions of songs without worry of copyright violation and offering the ability to share playlists with other MySpace users means the company's music service adds far more value to the social network. After all, networking with friends is fine for a while, but soon enough, you're going to want something more to keep you interested in the service, right? MySpace decided music was the way to keep you there and make you want to continue using its service. Facebook has yet to do it. Mark that as one (major) point for MySpace.

Don Reisinger is a social-network addict. Check out his profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed.

AOL's Bebo social network is getting a new focus today. In addition to its own native social network features, the site is getting a "social inbox" that aggregates the activities of its users' friends, no matter which social networks they use.

Bebo's new home: Social feed aggregation.

(Credit: AOL)

Many social network users are already familiar with this concept. Facebook can take in a lot of feeds from other services, for example. And FriendFeed is the ultimate social aggregator, at least functionally. The difference with Bebo is that your friends don't have to join the service for you to see their updates. You'll see the updates from all the friends you are connected with on all your services in the single Bebo in-box. For example, if you tell Bebo your Twitter ID, all the updates from people you follow on Twitter will show up in your Bebo in-box. (Some of the new aggregation features won't be online until January.)

Much of the functionality of Social Inbox comes from Socialthing, which AOL acquired in August.

Bebo Social Inbox will also aggregate e-mail in-boxes from several services. And, like Facebook, it will have an embedded instant messaging function, using the AOL Instant Messenger network. But it won't integrate non-AIM instant messaging buddy lists together, like Meebo does. "We're in the process of figuring that out," AOL's senior vice president of people networks, David Lui, told me.

In addition to reading data from your friends' services, Social Inbox will also act as a limited outbox, allowing you to post comments back to some of the originating feeds. AOL is working with various standards and social network companies directly to enable the two-way links. Liu believes it's in everybody's interest to work both ways, and he says talks are going well.

The product will also give users content recommendations based on friends' posted online activity. "We're not going to try to guess what you are interested in," Liu said. Rather, the service will bubble up the content and media links that your friends are sharing the most.

To log in to the new service, you'll need either a Bebo or AOL ID. The company is looking at supporting Google Friend Connect for log-ins in the future.

This new product is being launched in part to give Bebo a boost in the U.S., where it is not a leading social network. It has about 6 million monthly unique users in the U.S., according to ComScore, compared to 26 million worldwide. AIM has about 30 million. Facebook is running at about 130 million monthly active users, according to Facebook. "The strategy is to convert AIM users to Bebo," Liu said. He also noted that the demographic profiles of AIM users is not the same as the newer social networks. "We understand the older [25+] demographic," he said, referring to AIM users, "and it can be monetized."

Regardless, the product itself looks useful. Certainly there are several companies looking to solve social network clutter, but AOL's solution looks fairly clean and straightforward. I'd like to see a widget version so I can watch my network without going to the Web site, and I am curious to see how this aggregation space shapes up in 2009. It's going to be very competitive.

See also PeopleBrowsr (review) and Power.com (review).

Social network Bebo announced on Tuesday that it has made short-form video content from sports entertainment conglomerate ESPN available to its U.S. visitors. The programming available will include recap show SportsCenter Right Now, as well as clips from Mike and Mike in the Morning, Pardon the Interruption, Around the Horn, and select news and game footage.

It's a partnership that was first announced nearly a year ago but which has only now taken effect. The ESPN content will be incorporated into "Open Media," Bebo's project to provide more audio and video content to members of its "social-media network" (emphasis on the "media"). Open Media was launched last November with partners including ESPN, as well as Viacom's MTV, the BBC, and CNET Networks parent CBS.

There are plenty of old-media companies involved in this deal. ESPN is owned 80 percent by the Disney's ABC and 20 percent by Hearst. Bebo has been owned by AOL since early this year, after an $850 million acquisition by the Time Warner subsidiary.

But despite its domestic ownership, the youth-oriented Bebo is still most popular in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Adding ESPN content is another move toward capturing a bigger audience in the United States, where MySpace remains the top social network.

The knife-wielding cast of 'KateModern.'

(Credit: Bebo)

Bebo doesn't just want to be that social network that AOL bought--it also wants to be a hub for entertainment.

The site, now part of the Time Warner unit's "People Networks" division, has appointed the London-based Kelly Brett as its head of original productions.

Brett had last worked on KateModern, a Bebo-hosted video series created by Lonelygirl15 production company Eqal (then known as LG15 Productions), and she also counts projects for television networks like the BBC, Sky, and ITV on her resume.

The youth-oriented Bebo, with most of its popularity concentrated in the United Kingdom and Ireland, has hosted several original series, in addition to KateModern: Gap Year, Sofia's Diary, and The Secret Life of Sam King. Sofia's Diary was later picked up by the U.K.'s Channel Five network, making it the first British TV show to arise on the Web. In the United States, the buzzed-about Web series Quarterlife was picked up by NBC but canceled after a single episode due to low ratings.

Brett's first project is the currently airing Sam King, a collaboration between Bebo and Universal Music about a fictional Universal mail room employee whose dealings with real-life bands and artists are detailed in the comedy series.

The "social network as entertainment venue" model has been explored in varying degrees by different companies; in the U.S., the best-known example of the phenomenon is News Corp.'s MySpace, which hosts the occasional original show on its MySpaceTV platform. It also served as the platform for the final episode of the syndicated Lonelygirl15.