Bebo
Bebo is a social networking website launched in 2005. It now describes itself as "a company that dreams up ideas for fun social apps;" Joe Mbu, the man behind the Bebo relaunch, has confirmed that the site will not be returning as a social network but as a company that makes social apps. The company announced the launch of their newest app, Blab, in early 2014 and in December 2014 a new version of Bebo launched as an avatar hashtag messaging app.
As of July 2013, it is owned and operated by its founders Michael Birch and Xochi Birch, who took over from Criterion Capital Partners after the company declared bankruptcy.
History
Bebo was founded by husband-and-wife team Michael and Xochi Birch in January 2005 at their home in San Francisco. The website name was bought by the founders, and the backronym "Blog Early, Blog Often" was invented to answer the question of what the name meant.
The website, at the height of its popularity, overtook Myspace to become the most widely used social networking website in the United Kingdom, eventually registering at least 10.7 million unique users. The site was also extremely popular in Ireland – at one point it claimed to have over a million Irish users, and data from Alexa ranked it as Ireland's most-visited site. Its popularity saw it sold to AOL for $850 million in 2008.
