Posted on January 27, 2009 by Luke

Mike Butcher at TechCrunch has written an interesting piece about Bebo and the rumour that AOL is now looking to sell it.

He has spoken to people close to Bebo and tells a fascinating account of how, in 2007, Bebo cleverly pitched itself to ad agencies and PR-ed itself to the UK media.

This is a favourite line from the piece:

It would be fair to say that many advertising agencies then – and even to some extent even now – don’t have a clue about the Web.

Bebo has been innovative in the way it has integrated brands into its site content. Though now we have a recession it will be easy to slap a ‘failed’ sticker on such pioneering approaches.

However, there’s something noteworthy that no-one mentions in current Bebo-related discussions.

The thing that nobody mentions is this: at this moment Bebo is completely, perhaps terminally, riddled with camgirl spam. And it seems it can do nothing to cure itself.

The reason this issue never gets mentioned may be because few commentators actually use Bebo. Why would they – for any right-minded over 18 it’s a pretty nauseating place to be, and at times disconcerting.

But Bebo’s problem is really big. It’s a pandemic that started over 18 months ago and is eating the site.

Users are now being DM-ed up to ten times a day by spammers. Profiles, groups and even brand content pages are being splattered in celebratory fashion. There are online protest groups and Downing Street petitions, but the situation has only escalated and Bebo is quite obviously losing any fight it may be putting up.

Have a browse round for an hour and you might conclude that there is more spam activity on Bebo than legitimate user activity.

It would have killed many sites – the community would flee – but Bebo must survive partly because of the single-mindedness of its users. Most of them are web-wise teens, 100% focused on friend communications. They have in-built cerebral spam filters that junk any message that is not from someone they recognise.

They aren’t going to hang out in Bebo forever. Will Bebo beat the spammers before they go? At a guess, Bebo acquisition rates are unlikely to rocket in the foreseeable.