SNS Bebo Part 2

In part 2 of my Bebo review, I would like to break down the aspects of the site that are the most important to me.

Home Page
When I get to the homepage I am surprisingly disappointed. Nothing fancy, nothing fancy at all. It is recommended to me that I view Lady Gaga's Poker Face video, as well as (buy?) the HSM3 DVD... did they not realize I said I was born in 1985? Do they really think I would be interested in High School Musical? Maybe they are trying to make me cooler than my ancient age of 25.



Like most SNS's I have used, I am able to easily add video, photos, and applications to my profile. It looks like many users use the Timeline space to rant and rave about the things they love most in life...



Layout
The design aspects of the layout is the bland To Do and Lifestream sections. There is an option to customize your profile background and sadly people have taken advantage of this... and their profiles look overwhelmingly cluttered. There doesn't seem to be a great sense of calm across the profile base on this SNS... and there is a huge overuse of the smiley face. EEK!



Oh here we go, I'm also allowed to "Tell my friends what I'm up to! How about now?," and "Go to my stuff." I'm about to go on a hunt to see what their target audience is for the site... no luck.

Culture
After finding their Testimonials page, it looks like they have a group of Bebo addicts to advocate for them. Some people make the comment that Facebook is too slow in their country, or they have never tried Myspace. I cannot imagine having never tried either before coming across, and becoming addicted to Bebo. Going off of the pictures I see on this page, I think they have a younger, high school, aged audience that spans several other countries. I also have made this assumption because some of the most popular bands (noted on my Bebo Profile) are Fall Out Boy, Miley Cyrus, and Rihanna.



Looking through various user profiles... it seems like another random group of people that want to be heard by whoever will listen.


That are okay with "flirting" with people or are scared of cyber stalking/bullying so they have set their profiles as private.


Overall Thought: Not impressed. It is a bad version of what Myspace used to be before the spammers took over back in 2007.

Postive Note: They seem to have a loyal following that embrace the chaos and make this and this happen.

SNS Bebo Part 1

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.