Categories: Social Media

Bebo may have just shutdown

Update 2: Bebo is back! At least the web version is anyway. Some mobile app users are still reporting technical issues. So after almost 34 hours of downtime, and about five hours of uptime now and counting, there still hasn’t been any official announcement from Bebo. This definitely is not how to gracefully handle an outage.

Update 1: Looks like Bebo’s shutdown may only be temporary. Michael Birch, Bebo’s original founder who re-joined Bebo’s board in December 2010, has responded on Twitter saying that the site “should be coming back in a matter of hours”. No reason has been given yet for the outage, although we do know it was certainly unexpected and confusing as Birch tweeted minutes prior to this of how sad he was that Bebo has “actually gone” – #longlivebebo.

Bebo may have closed it service to the public indefinitely in the last few hours. The once ubiquitous social network has been in decline ever since its original founder Michael Birch sold the company to AOL in 2008 for $850 million.

The domain bebo.com has been unreachable for the last few hours, with no maintenance notice or explanation from Bebo themselves. In June 2010, AOL sold Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners for a reported $10 million – a financial firm with a good track-record of turning companies around.

Would-be Bebo users have taken to Twitter in their masses tonight questioning whether the service has really gone, with some openely sharing love so to speak. The hash-tag #bebomemories is already trending worldwide on Twitter.

Bebo’s community manager Sabrina Bruning left the company last month.

So is Bebo really gone for good? Perhaps it’s just an unexpected server issue with poor public relations on Bebo’s part. To shut the service down without allowing users time to download their data first doesn’t make sense.

It’s even possible that Bebo are launching a new product or feature? We’ve reached-out to Bebo for some clarification.

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

View Comments

  • With that type of traffic ad revenue must be good, congrats on turning thesociable.co into such a popular blog.

  • Still not enough to buy us a decent server yet! Thanks for the comments though, we're trying to get it back up but load just brings it straight down again :(

  • Hey Sociable, we are looking at Amazon for our scalability might be worth a look as their prices allow for gradual or spikey growth :)

  • With that type of traffic ad revenue must be good, congrats on turning thesociable.co into such a popular blog.

  • Still not enough to buy us a decent server yet! Thanks for the comments though, we're trying to get it back up but load just brings it straight down again :(

  • Hey Sociable, we are looking at Amazon for our scalability might be worth a look as their prices allow for gradual or spikey growth :)

Recent Posts

Meet agentic AI: Your AI agent just leveled up to teammate (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

You’ve probably been coming across the term “agentic AI” a lot more recently, and in…

17 hours ago

True robot intelligence requires a digital twin of the entire world: WEF ‘Summer Davos’ in China

In order to achieve true robot intelligence, a digital twin of the entire world would…

1 day ago

Sensors to surveil people & cities among WEF top 10 emerging technologies at ‘Summer Davos’

Autonomous Biochemical Sensing can turn human bodies into surveillance tools for monitoring and control, Collaborative…

2 days ago

AI and the Dopamine Trap: How Algorithms Are Rewiring Our Social Cravings

New research shows AI companions can lift mood and teach social skills, but only when…

5 days ago

Hate speech, deepfakes & false info undermine UN work: comms chief

Hate speech is a launching point for crackdowns on narratives that impede UN agendas: perspective…

5 days ago

Making Sense brings strategic insight to the SIM Hartford Chapter

On June 4, technology executives gathered at the SIM Hartford chapter presided over by Fariba…

7 days ago