You might know one of the greatest and biggest social networking sites – bebo.com, but you probably don’t know how it started and turned into the huge world community portal it is now. It has more than 120 000 000 registered users from all around the globe and they are constantly growing. This makes it the 8th biggest social network in the world in 2011 (see top 30 social networking sites). One very interesting and inspiring story…
How www.bebo.com Was Started
Like almost every great business, bebo.com was started with almost nothing, by an American family – Michael Birch, husband, and Xochi Birch, wife. This happened in their home in San Francisco in the year 2005.
Michael met his wife and later business partner in London, where he studied physics at the “Imperial College of London”. During that time, the dot-com bubble had been growing rapidly and many web entrepreneurs had been making very decent money. Watching this action, the young couple decided to try to catch the wave and launch an online business. Everything didn’t go quite well, they quickly failed… As any self-respecting entrepreneur, they didn’t give up. After some time, they launched another Internet company, but they had no luck too. Then they started for the third time… Believe it or not, they totally failed once again. The average person would have given up already, but this is not common for entrepreneurs. They stood up once again and launched their new project – “Birthday Alarm” – an ecards website, which is still present today. It wasn’t that successful but earned enough to cover the daily expenses of the young family.
Michael and Xochi knew, that there is great potential in the Internet business. They continued searching for the next hot trend, and not surprisingly they found it! At that time a new social site had been started – Friendster.com. Inspired by the new social media’s quick success, Birch decided to try this out. Michael began coding a portal with similar features. After just a few weeks, Ringo – their own social site went online. Very soon the number of registered users reached more than 25 000… The growth was really fast and the family was afraid, that they couldn’t manage it. They decided to sell the site…
Having already some “social experience”, Xochi and Michael started their new project – BEBO. This happened in 2005, several years after the dot.com boom, which they had missed… The site targeted people after their thirties and wasn’t a mania among these people initially. But it began growing and getting more and more popular. The founders formed a great team, which was one of the main factors for success. Just three years later, AOL offered $850 000 000 for bebo.com, there was a deal. The young family made almost $600 million of dollars, selling their 70% stake in the company. I don’t know why maybe they just reached their dreams.
After the financial crisis hit the world, AOL decided to sell or shut down bebo.com, because it wasn’t bringing much success to the company. In April 2010, Bebo was sold for $10 million…Â It was not the greatest deal, was it? But for the new owners – Criterion Capital Partners, it was! Soon on the 9th of December, 2010, an announcement appeared that one of the founders of the site – Michael Brich was coming back on board. So, some good years might be coming soon …
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Check some other cool startup articles:
A Short Biography of Michael Dell – How He Founded Dell With Just $1000
How Tom Anderson And Chris DeWolfe Founded Myspace – History
A History of Tumblr – See How David Karp Founded The Company
Dell Computers History – The Start-Up Story of Michael Dell
Rebelmouse.com’s History – Paul Berry’s Social Aggregator Start Up
When Did Twitter Start? How Jack Dorsey Founded The Company
LinkedIn History – How Reid Hoffman Started The Worlds Top Professional Social Site
How Dropbox Was Founded – The Start-Up Story Of Drew Houston
