A few weeks after AOL (NYSE: TWX) denied it would hastily off-load its $850m Bebo acquisition, the social network is trumpeting a whole roster of new products offered not just through Bebo, but through AOL itself, AIM, ICQ and AOL’s mobile products, each of which are harmonising user profiles. Designed to position the service as an on-ramp to the whole social web rather then merely one part of it, these are the features social net promised its new owner as part of its dowry. As president Joanna Shields and senior vice-president and general manager David Liu told paidContent.org, it’s all part of AOL’s wider strategy for Bebo: audience before profit, broaden the demographic.
Before we can get to that, though, let’s knock the Bebo-for-sale elephant out of the room. Shields told me: “The chief executive of Time Warner handled it best in the conference call when he said it wasn’t on the table.” As for an earlier admission by TW chief executive Jeff Bewkes that AOL “may have overpaid” for Bebo, Shields said: “You know what? If you look at the market over the last year and how much it’s changed – there isn’t a chief executive in this entire country that probably hasn’t overdone something.”
• So how does Bebo prove itself in a down market? With Facebook Connect and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Friend Connect vying to underpin users’ web-wide experiences and with FriendFeed, Facebook and Twitter having proved the appetite for stream-based info, Bebo, too, has plenty to gain by aggregating supposed rivals. Shields: “FriendFeed is a good product and they’re on the right track but they don’t have a network behind it. Facebook is only feeds from your Facebook friends.” Liu: “What’s really important is what’s happening with your friends, not necessarily what network they’re on. We have a competitive advantage, compared to anyone in the world, because of the scale we have on the web, in mobile and other areas (via AOL).”
For example, Liu said his grandmother may not herself use Twitter, Flickr or even Bebo itself, but she can receive family members’ feeds through her AIM client. These connecting tissues will also be offered to third-party destinations. Liu: “Even if a person is on a publisher site, they should be able to have those conversations.”
• How will any of this make money? Shields’ answer suggests AOL isn’t sweating for an immediate return on its Bebo outlay, waiting instead for the promise of a real payday: “That’s always a good question – the most important thing for us right now is to build our audience, to offer these technologies to people wherever they need them … as soon as that’s built, we’ll work on that. This year is about audience for us; it’s all about getting more users and engaging them for longer periods of time on all our properties.” Liu: “If you look at the other sites, we’ve done a fairly decent job of monetisation. This isn’t about picking up dollar bills here and there – we really want to build the property. We want to monetise, of course, but we have to make jumps in our reach – as soon as we do that, we’ll be there.”
With forecasts for social network ad spend being cut and recent speculation on how much money Bebo can really generate for AOL, isn’t Shields, who has long advocated the promise of “engagement marketing”, concerned about the outlook? “Bebo has always been one of the most successful networks out there in terms of monetisation. People are applying web models to social networks – it’s just not the same. (Social networks) give you opportunities to deliver new forms of advertising. It’s not going to be about the banner or the MPU.”
• More than just British teens: The team seems eager to broaden Bebo’s traditional 13-24, British/Irish/Australian audience, especially in AOL’s homeland, whilst not abandoning its user base. With the new features pitched, like much of Bebo to date, as a way for bands to keep young fans updated, is the focus still on the youth market? Shields: “No, not at all. Every user’s different – some people just want to get status updates, other people really want to tell their story; I don’t think that’s age-dependent – I think these products have a much broader demographic appeal.”
Will Bebo commission more product placement-supported interactive video dramas, like Loneygirl15 spin-off KateModern and Endemol‘s Gap Year reality travelogue? Shields suggested they wouldn’t go down so well with US users: “We’re looking at that more in terms of specific markets. You’ll see quite a few, but it depends on the market and demographic. In the US, we’re focusing on a much broader play.” Engineering vice-president Darius Contractor, also on the call: “We’re trying to focus on building things that everyone needs; we do need to be broad in the US. Everyone needs a lifestream; FriendFeed is a fantastic service; is it the easiest service? Not everyone can make it easy like we can with AIM on the client.” The trio used again used grandparents and young mothers as example beneficiaries.
• About those new features: Built using AOL’s SocialThing acquisition and rolling in to Bebo’s already-released Social Inbox aggregator, Lifestream is a FriendFeed imitation that gathers friends’ activities from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and Delicious, with more to come. Lifestory is an embeddable timeline for users’ profile history. Launching next month, Stories will “pick up where blogs left off”, letting users collaboratively author a multimedia publishing space. Beta-launched quietly in December, the Social Discovery Engine leverages profile data through algorithms to recommend related music, videos and people.
From paidContent:UK:
• Digital Britain: Nevermind the media, it’s about online govt
• Broadband Content Bits: Channel4; Fox Web TV; Playboy.co.uk; Sony PSP; Imagine pPublishing
• It’s official: Chernin’s tenure as News Corp chief operating officer will expire when his contract does on June 30
• EMI CEO warns ISPs: Close your pipes to illegal downloading
• Report: Vodafone UK to cull ‘hundreds’ of jobs
• Pay wall renaissance? Not for Alphaville; nothing concrete from Times
• Micropayments? Won’t work. Here’s a better plan for newspapers
• Industry moves: Raindance film festival producer joins DailyMotion
• Spreadshirt lands €10m for custom clothes design
• Metro International gets buy-out offer; will consider alongside refinancing
• Trinity Mirror does online integration at Scottish titles, 70 jobs at threat
• FT goes one up on France: offering three-day work week and other options
• Local journalists out on strike as newspaper owners plan leaner future
From paidContent:
• Industry moves: even more Brilliant; Google’s charity chief gets a promotion
• Yahoo to details some new ad targeting tools today; targeted graphical ads in search
• Veronis Suhler issues new 2009 ad forecast; digital still up, but not by as much
• News Corp’s Slingshot Labs launches first public project: Gossip site DailyFill
• Again, and again and again: JupiterMedia changes its name to WebMediaBrands
• Memo from Murdoch: It’s an ‘ideal opportunity to streamline and enhance functions’
• What’s next for Chernin? Hefty Fox deal, anti-malaria efforts – and maybe a fund of his own
• Memo from Peter Chernin: Departure ‘Not a decision that came easily’
• The Chernin File: His salary, severance package and movie deal
• 10-K Watch: Time Warner spent $359m on layoffs last year
• How Glam made money off Twitter during the Oscars
• Microsoft taps major publishers to help steer PubCenter ad platform
• Interview: Yahoo’s Khemlani explains his move to hearst as chief executive’s top digital advisor
• Oodle adds another big classifieds partner
• @ IAB: the good news for online ad spend is found in other categories’ bad news
• If cable companies start streaming shows, what would it mean for consumers?
• IAB conference roundup: simplifying online ad sales; looking at data ownership; audience measurement