AllFacebook - Latest Comments in Bebo Launch Grants Monopolies

Re: Bebo Launch Grants Monopolies

Michael Birch — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:44:13 -0000

I'm the CEO of Bebo and just wanted to explain the reason from the Bebo perspective. I understand your pain and this is not an environment we wanted to create but were stuck with a tough choice. We launched the Bebo platform all at one time, the API's etc, FB did this as a phased release. We are also launching into a mature market where there are 1000's of apps ready to deploy, when FB launched they had launch partners whilst everyone else had to scramble to develop from scratch which took a week or 2 at least. If we just opened up to all at once we'd have 1000's of untested apps running on Bebo which would in all likelihood take the site down. We've had problems scaling as it is with just 40 apps. We do plan to be a totally level playing field and ensure that it's the best apps that win not just the spammy apps, I acknowledge that there is an advantage being first but we had to put the user experience first.

We will go live to all as soon as we feel we've reached stability with the platform. We had a long weekend fixing issues so not quite there yet...

Re: Bebo Launch Grants Monopolies

Jason Rubenstein — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:32:52 -0000

A difference from the FB launch: this gives launch-partners a wide opportunity to grab markets that didn't develop until well after the F8 launch. Simply by observing the most successful FB, apps of the last 6 months, launch partners have a wealth of choices for Bebo app development.

Re: Bebo Launch Grants Monopolies

Boris Silver — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:35:14 -0000

Mark,

I'm not sitting on the sidelines watching other people make apps and commenting about it -- I'm in the thick of it all. Perhaps my apps will bomb in the future, but so far they haven't. My company has found success on Facebook and I see no reason why we can't continue that success if we were given the same access to the Bebo Platform as other companies.

-Boris M. Silver

Re: Bebo Launch Grants Monopolies

Mark — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 04:06:00 -0000

cool, line up your excuses BEFORE your app even has a chance to bomb.

Re: Bebo Launch Grants Monopolies

Jeff — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 02:33:14 -0000

I absolutely agree. I think Bebo is elitist and playing favorites for no apparent good reason. They deserve to be a 2nd or 3rd tier social network, as the people who run this platform clearly don't know how to build relationships with developers

Re: Bebo Launch Grants Monopolies

Tom — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:39:58 -0000

I feel your pain. I submitted apps starting 6 days after the fb launch. It took them 5 weeks to approve them. 5 weeks while watching all those that launched rocket up.

Re: Bebo Launch Grants Monopolies

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:30:49 -0000

Facebook did the same thing with its launch and with its favoritism to certain app developers. All of these 'open' platforms give advantages to bigger players.