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| ==Awards== | ==Awards== | ||
| Bebo has won the following awards: | |||
| *Worst website in the world. | |||
| Bebo won the People's Choice award in the Social Networking category of the 2006 ]. | |||
| ==Criticisms== | ==Criticisms== | ||
Revision as of 09:30, 6 December 2006
Bebo (pronounced "Bee-bow") is a social networking website, designed to allow friends to communicate in various ways. It has developed into an online community where users can post pictures, write blogs and send messages to one another, and is similar in format to MySpace, hi5.com, Xanga and Yahoo! 360.
The site has over 22,000,000 registered members. It is estimated that about 5 people register every second (although a much smaller number of members are regularly active on the website). Bebo is the 340th most popular English language website, according to Alexa Internet, and the second most popular in Ireland according to the Irish Independent (17th in the UK). In the US, Bebo was the fastest growing social networking site in June 2006 according to Hitwise, Inc.
Features
Profile Components
Once a user has registered an account, they edit and maintain their own profile page using online forms. The top of a user's profile contains information about the user, which would typically include their name, a picture, a paragraph about them, and some miscellaneous information under various headings. Although default headings are provided, many users create their own to reflect their own interests, or to include quips, quotes or jibes.
Profiles include; a whiteboard, in which other users can draw pictures using a system called ffArt, a comment section where other users can leave a message, and a list of the user's friends. These are all publically viewable, unless the user selects the "Private Profile" option, which limits access to the profile to friends specifically added by the user.
Profiles usually also include quizzes, polls, photo albums, blogs with a comments section for others' responses, a list of bands (see below) of which the profile-holder is a groupie, and a Bebo TV box, which plays video, often linked from YouTube, or uploaded direct to Bebo,
Bands
On 11 July 2006, Bebo Bands was launched. On this section of the site, bands or solo artists are able to create a profile showcasing their music. Along with undiscovered talents, it has a section called "New Music Only on Bebo" linking to established artist pages including Paris Hilton, Matt Willis, Orson, Coldplay, Kylie Minogue, Katie Melua n more.
The band pages include; a band member list which is similar to the friends list on a normal profile, a list of groupies (fans who have added the band, as though it were a friend), an area for tour dates, a blog, and a list of songs which have been uploaded for playing through Bebo's media player, or to be added to other user's playlists. These songs can be grouped by the band into albums, along with cover-art. All band members can edit the content of the band profile. But some of these band pages and pages of celebrities are just people pretending to be the celebrity
Awards
Bebo has won the following awards:
- Worst website in the world.
Criticisms
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Bebo was initially designed strictly as a contact and photo-sharing site, so that users' personal information was visible to all of their friends. After an experiment was carried out by Adams Rants to see how many users would blindly accept friend requests from strangers (and thus divulge potentially dangerous details), Bebo de-emphasised the contact sharing feature and changed it so users must "opt-in" to having their contact details shared.
Bebo has been accused of taking up so much of students' time that campus computers in various colleges and universities are blocked up by students accessing it, at the expense of students wishing to do genuine coursework. As a result, several Irish universities (including NUI Galway ,Galway-Mayo Institute of technology/G.M.I.T., Queen's University of Belfast and NUI Maynooth St Patrick's College, Carlow) and schools have blocked the site. It is still possible to access Bebo via proxy when it is blocked.
Concerns have been raised about potential risks to children from paedophiles accessing personal information contained in profiles. In Ireland, for example, the Sunday Tribune newspaper carried out an experiment whereby a reporter posing as a 13 year old girl set up an account, and proceeded to gather personal information and photos of other teenage girls.
In March 2006 Norfolk County Council is believed to have become the first LEA in the United Kingdom to order all schools in its authority to block the website from school computers due to it being used for "unsavoury activities".
In various parts of the site, the user may experience errors in pages, such as photo albums not showing up, and links to content on a person's profile displaying the corresponding content from a different user's profile (often that of the previous profile viewed). This is a long-standing problem, but efforts are being made to fix it.
Many have criticized the number of Bebo invitational e-mails sent from the site, which have caused many people's e-mail inboxes to become clogged. However it would now seem that the number of invites being sent is in decline.
Internal spam is another problem. Some Bebo users send many un-solicited chain e-mails, wasting bandwidth, inbox space and time. These chain e-mails occasionally purport to be from the developers of Bebo, claiming that the recipient's account will be deleted or in some way curtailed unless the chain e-mail is forwarded to every one of their friends. These claims are in all cases false. Bebo has been forced to place a notice in the mail section of the site, reminding users that Bebo will never use chain e-mails as a means of communication. Other popular chain e-mail types are humorous stories, personality quizzes to be filled out, "petitions" for various causes, and e-mails which must be forwarded to avoid bad luck, or some other such superstition.
Bebo set up a new mailing system where chain letters are virtually impossible to send. A person can put any number of their friends into a mail subscription list to send pictures, messages etc to. The recieving person maythen choose if they want to stay subscribed to the mailing list.
Bebo has also been the subject of criticism with regard to its recurrent technical problems.
See also
- List of social networking websites
- Also there url for Technical Bebo.
References
- BBC News article, March 2006
- Alexa Internet traffic ranking for Bebo.com, 15 May 2006
- Hitwise Inc. Press Release, 11 July 2006
- UCC Express, March 15, 2006