Bebo Adds Ad-Supported Video, Music Coming Soon

Written by A. L. Friedman

Tuesday, November 13. 2007 at 11:51 AM EST Post a comment

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Bebo has announced a video and music platform called OpenMedia, through which content companies can push their wares to the social network's 40 million users. Bebo is the biggest social network in the U.K. and the third largest in the United States.

Right now, OpenMedia allows companies with their own player and their own advertising to launch branded "Channel Profiles" on Bebo and keep 100 percent of their revenue. But relatively soon (December 2007), companies will be able to use Bebo's own player to push videos, for which Bebo will supply the ads. And for that offering, the social network will keep a cut of the revenue. Along with the Channel Profiles comes site-wide promotional opportunities, including a "Channel Surfing" recommendation engine which is now included in the video player on personal pages.

OpenMedia is an interesting, somewhat hands-off approach to video integration, which leads me to think that MySpace might be over-pursuing a bit. MySpaceTV exists as an entirely separate entity and has focused on landing content deals. Facebook, on the other hand, has barely done a damn thing with video, content to let its legion of free market application developers figure something out.

Bebo's approach actually looks most like the up-and-coming imeem. Recall that imeem's big play is its ad-supported music platform. So it's no big shock that Bebo is promising OpenMedia Music in the coming months.

A list of Bebo's partners in the launch includes: BBC, Endemol, ESPN, CBS, MTV, JibJab, TBS, Next New Networks, Yahoo, VBS, BSkyB, Channel 4, Last.fm, Ministry of Sound, Music Nation, SumoTV, Ustream, FabChannel, ITN, and Kontraband.