Bebo Plans To Take On Facebook & Twitter

Bebo’s co-founder plans to relaunch the social network with a focus on profiles and “real-time” interactions between friends rather the news feeds at the core of Twitter and Facebook.

Michael Birch says his aim is to provide a “refreshing break” from the misinformation spread elsewhere.

In an exclusive interview, he told the BBC he was coding the effort himself.

And while he has high hopes, he acknowledges the odds are stacked against him.

Bebo – an acronym for “blog early, blog often” – was once the most popular network in the UK, as well as being big in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. At its peak it had more than 40 million members.

In, 2008 Mr Birch and his wife Xochi sold the site to AOL for $850m (£623m).

They later bought it back for $1m and tried to revamp it in several ways, most recently as an e-sports streaming service, before finally selling the business on to Amazon’s Twitch in 2019 for $25m.