Bebo is back – but instead of taking on old rival Facebook in the online social networking arena, it's joining the increasingly crowded instant messaging market instead.
But where services like Snapchat, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger focus primarily on delivering text, pictures and video, Bebo is hoping its unique avatars and hashtag-triggered animations will appeal to users perhaps too young to have used the original Bebo.
The company was sold to AOL in 2008 for US$850 million and eventually bought back by its founder Michael Birch for a relatively paltry US$1 million in 2013. Mr Birch shut the website down, promising it would one day return.
Now that day has come, with the launch of its iOS and Android app.
Users have to create an avatar, with customisable hair, skin tones, eye colour, clothes et cetera, which then act out actions triggered by hashtags in the users' messages, such as #slap, #twerk, #bubblebath and #datenightwithnetflix.
Some hashtags trigger mini applications inside Bebo; for example, #draw allows you to create pictures to send to your friends, #magic8ball conjures up a magic eight ball and #flappyhead brings up a Flappy Bird-inspired game, but with your head instead of a bird.
UK paper The Telegraph described it as "so insane it might just work", praising its "emoji-like experience on steroids".
But there are privacy concerns with the app, with Business Insider reporting Bebo's developers monitor every hashtag, and if you use one that doesn't trigger one of its in-animations or pictures, they will be notified of what it was.
Bebo says this is so they can develop new animations for popular hashtags.
From January 31, users of the old Bebo site will be able to download photos they may have thought were long lost.
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source: newshub archive
