Contentinople - Ryan Lawler - News Bits: Bebo's New One-Stop Social Shop

Written by Ryan Lawler

Wednesday, December 10. 2008 at 08:45 AM EST Post a comment

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Remember when AOL was the one place you went to for all your emailing, instant messaging, chat rooming, and all-around social communicating online? So does AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) -- which is probably why the company is positioning its social networking property, Bebo, as the hub for all your social networking needs.

According to All Things Digital, AOL relaunched Bebo today with a slew of new features, including a "social inbox" that will afford users a comprehensive view of all their social communications, including email, instant messaging, and multiple social feeds.

Using technology that the company acquired from SocialThing, Bebo will aggregate content from multiple social networking sites, including Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, AIM, and Del.icio.us. The site is also launching with a new media recommendations engine that will provide suggestions based on users' stated preferences, as well as what their friends are watching.

But perhaps most importantly, Bebo will provide a one-stop view of multiple email acccounts, even allowing them to view their AOL and AIM Mail, Yahoo Mail, and Google's Gmail accounts on a single page. Because email, after all, is the real killer app -- something AOL probably remembers from back when everyone had an @aol.com email address.

In other news:

It's officially layoff day at Yahoo, which means some 1,500 employees will say good-bye to their jobs sometime in the next 12 to 18 hours. And now we have the company's instructions on how to let employees go, courtesy of Valleywag. Included in the slides are Yahoo's suggested messaging to sacked employees (Boss: "Hello, Ryan. I need to talk with you about something important..." Employee: "Hrm, I wonder what this could be about?"), as well as some dos and don'ts (DO: Own the discussion; DON'T: Own the employee's feelings).

Very few fans will be able to watch the NBA All-Star Game live and in-person, but Turner Sports, the National Basketball Association (NBA), and Cinedigm are attempting to offer basketball fanatics the next best thing. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the organizations have teamed up to broadcast TNT's NBA All-Star Saturday Night Coverage to more than 80 movie theaters in the U.S. live and in 3D! It's important to note that they won't be broadcasting the actual All-Star Game in 3-D -- that just might make a fan's head explode -- but the show will include the 3-point shooting contest, the slam dunk contest, and all the other miscellaneous pre-game BS fun.

Tags: AOL, Bebo, Business, Facebook, Google, Headcount, Partnerships, Technology, Yahoo

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