Before Facebook became part of everyday life, many people in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Ireland and across Pacific communities were connecting with friends on Bebo.
Users decorated their profiles with colourful skins, shared photographs and music, wrote blog posts and left messages on their friends’ pages. There was also the famous Top 16 friends list, which could strengthen friendships or start arguments depending on where someone was placed.
For many young people, Bebo was their first real social network.
Now, Bebo is preparing to close again.
The company has announced that the platform will close on 1 September 2026. Founder Michael Birch described the announcement as Bebo’s final post and said the platform’s new home would be a social and messaging service called Bluebell.
However, Bebo’s story is not simply about an unsuccessful social network that lost to Facebook. Bebo had already become a major international success before poor management, changing ownership and Facebook’s rapid growth sent it into decline.
Bebo was already successful
Bebo was founded by husband-and-wife team Michael and Xochi Birch in January 2005.
Facebook had technically launched about 11 months earlier, in February 2004, but it was initially restricted mainly to university and school communities. Facebook did not become publicly available to everyone aged 13 and over until September 2006.
Bebo was therefore the social network many ordinary users joined before they had access to Facebook or before Facebook became widely popular in their communities.
Bebo grew quickly and became particularly popular among teenagers and young adults. At its height, it claimed around 40 million monthly users worldwide and became one of the leading social networks in several English-speaking countries.
Its success attracted the attention of American internet company AOL, which purchased Bebo for US$850 million in 2008.
The price shows that Bebo was not a failing platform at the time. AOL believed it was buying one of the future leaders of global social media.
What made Bebo different from Facebook?
Bebo focused heavily on personal profiles.
Users could choose their own profile designs, known as skins, upload photographs, share music, answer questionnaires, draw on whiteboards and leave comments for friends.
Its “Share the Love” feature allowed users to send hearts to people they appreciated. Its Top 16 list allowed people to publicly rank their closest friends.
Bebo felt personal, colourful and creative. A profile could reflect the user’s personality and interests.
Facebook took a different approach. Its profiles were cleaner and followed a standard design. Instead of giving users complete control over how their pages looked, Facebook concentrated on building an organised network based on people’s real names, schools, universities, workplaces, families and communities.
Facebook also made its News Feed central to the platform. People no longer needed to visit each friend’s individual profile to see what they were doing. Updates from everyone appeared together in one place.
Facebook then opened its platform to outside developers, leading to games and applications that encouraged users to return regularly and invite more friends.
Bebo gave people a personalised page on the internet. Facebook built an expanding network around people’s real lives.
What happened after AOL bought Bebo?
AOL’s purchase should have given Bebo the money, technology and corporate support needed to compete with Facebook.
Instead, AOL struggled to develop Bebo quickly enough and failed to turn its large audience into a successful long-term business.
Facebook continued adding features and attracting a much wider audience. It expanded beyond young people and university students to include parents, businesses, schools, churches, community groups, media organisations and governments.
Bebo remained strongly associated with teenagers and personalised profiles while the wider social-media market was changing around it.
Once entire families, workplaces and communities joined Facebook, its growth became self-reinforcing. People joined because everyone they knew was already there.
Only two years after buying Bebo for US$850 million, AOL sold it to an investment company for less than US$10 million.
The dramatic fall in value became one of the clearest examples of a major technology company buying a successful social platform but failing to understand how to protect and develop it.
Facebook’s rise would have created serious competition regardless of who owned Bebo. However, AOL’s failure to give the platform a clear direction accelerated its decline.
Bebo did not disappear because people had never wanted it. Millions of people were already using it. It lost momentum after the takeover while its main competitor continued innovating.
From Bebo to Bluebell
Bebo changed ownership several times and eventually entered bankruptcy. Michael Birch bought the company back for US$1 million in 2013, five years after selling it to AOL for US$850 million.
Several attempts have since been made to reinvent or revive the Bebo name, but none have recreated its earlier popularity.
Its creators are now turning their attention to Bluebell.
Bluebell is being presented as a combination of private messaging and social networking. It is designed around group conversations, photographs and people users already know, with “no feed of strangers”.
That approach appears to return to what many people originally liked about social media. Connecting with real friends without being overwhelmed by advertising, suggested content, political arguments and posts selected by algorithms.
For Pacific families spread across New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the islands, social media remains an important way of maintaining relationships across long distances.
Bebo helped provide that connection before Facebook became dominant.
Its closure marks the end of another chapter in early internet history. It also leaves an important lesson for the technology industry. Creating a popular platform is not enough. Its owners must understand what users value, continue developing it and protect the community that made it successful.
Bebo was not simply a failed social network. It was a social-media success story that lost its direction after being sold.
Now its creators are hoping Bluebell can recover some of the personal connection that made people love Bebo in the first place.
