AOL-owned company partners Turner Broadcasting’s REAL TV as content partner.
A little over two years after its launch in India in January 2007, AOL, the American internet services and media company owned by world’s third largest media and entertainment conglomerate has launched its social networking services ‘Bebo’. Known for its heavy entertainment contents, Bebo, as the company claims provides ‘Lifestream’ platform that enables users to connect with everything and everyone they care about irrespective of the medium they use, be it YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace or Linkin.
“It’s great for us to be in India. It’s a very dynamic market place and the leadership in this (social networking) category continues to change. We are looking at promotional campaign using the reach of AOL, and some other players to drive traffic to our site even though I think the first year will be very challenging for us,” Nicole Vanderbilt, VP International, Bebo told Business Standard.
Bebo plans to primarily focus on viral marketing in the first year of operation which means reaching out to new users by encouraging the existing users to pass along marketing message about the product. “Viral marketing has worked extremely well for us in other markets. Although we will be looking at some creative promotions in India, our main focus will be on the former. We are also looking at targeting existing AOL users through promotions on AOL platforms and properties,” added Vanderbilt. AOL India claims to be one of the top three web portals in India in terms of user base, within two years of its launch.
Bebo has already partnered with the Turner Broadcasting-owned Hindi entertainment channel REAL as a content partner. The entertainment programmes and the reality shows being aired in REAL TV is expected to provide the site with huge contents to make it more interactive through blogs. Besides, the company has also partnered Saavn, a digital distributor in Bollywood to provide entertainment content to the users. Vanderbilt said the company’s content partnership with Indian entertainment companies would help it to market the key entertainment offerings to the Indian audience.
Last week, Bebo launches editions in seven new geographies including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands. In the Asia Pacific region, Bebo is already present in Australia and New Zealand. According to recent research reports, Bebo which has more than 22 million unique visitors worldwide, is the number one social networking site in the Europe with total usage of 65 million hours per month, whereas in North America, it is the third largest with usage of 22 million hours per month. In India, Orkut topped the list of most visited social networking sites as of December 2008 followed by Facebook. According to a report published by comScore, the visitation to the social networking sites in India increased 51 per cent to 19 million in December 2008, when compared with the same period last year.
“Social networking continued to grow strongly in India this past year, with several of the top global brands carving out a more prominent position. While there is certainly room for several players in the social networking space in India, the sites that have the right blend of having both a strong brand and cultural relevance will be best positioned for future growth, says Will Hodgman, executive vice president, comScore.
