First Impression
My first impression when clicking around Bebo a few days ago was that it is a less organized version of Myspace.
The Bebo Mission
The mission of the site is to "help you discover what's going on with YOUR world, and help the world discover what is going on with you. This language is very informal. Are the creators trying to be cool? Trying to be the site that knows what its audience can relate to and stoops to their level. I find this to be very, what is the word, forced. A forced fun, laid back, friendly relationship between the site's creators and their users.
About
On the about page it is explained that their latest features are a Social Inbox (Organize all email accounts into one inbox? Not really clear how this works.),a Lifestream Platform (Lifestream... as in Facebook's Live Feed but connecting all of your social media accounts?), and a Timeline (your personal newsfeed... you do something on Bebo, your actions are added to this feed). They (the Bebo team) also includes an address for Bebo so that users can send their ideas or "talk to one of our amazing team members." Oh come on, seriously? I realize this is the right thing to do, you know the start of a good B2C experience, but it is cheesy and annoying. I'm not actually sure I am over how awful the name Bebo sounds, so that may be creating a bias and overall negative tone for this review.
Getting Started
So I made an alias so that I can explore this site a little further. Hello Myra Jackson. One of the first screens I was sent to is my Edit Profile Screen. Apparently Facebook does everything right because the information page is a gray version of what I have used to seeing since a few Facebook updates ago... only with a gray color palette.
I bet there is a Facebook template out there for use/sale.
ReplyDeleteAs for your post, good insight, but I wish you had covered more of the items in my seven question lead. (I'll check your next post and see if you covered more of them there.)