Bebo / Orange

Thomas Husson | October 23, 2007, 04:09 PM

Bebo mobile is now live with Orange UK.

The service will be free for the first month and then will cost 3€ for unlimited browsing to Bebo mobile website and unlimited text uploads (to your friends or to update a profile or a blog) and unlimited text alerts & reply (comments,...). This sounds a very interesting offer, all the more there is also a new tariff plan (2p per text, 2p per minute) which will be co-marketed by Orange and Bebo. I saw some comments saying it was less competitive than the 02 & MySpace agreement. I only know that the offering with 02 is free for 2 months but still unsure what I would have to pay once the 2 months are over. Bebo users will have to pay for MMS uploads on top of the Bebo Extra package.

Anyway, my key takeways are as follow:

- social networking is increasingly popular in the mobile space even though it still is the very early days (I was amazed to discover that Bebo is the n1 search query on Yahoo! mobile search on 3UK)

- reasons why users visit online social networking sites is to communicate with friends and to make new friends. Phones are communication tools and thus a natural extension for those services, provided the mobile-user experience is compelling.

- operators have an opportunity to engage with youth communities and to generate higher data Arpu.

The challenge for Bebo will now be to make sure the user-experience is great enough that it will generate a large and sticky audience, once the service will be available to other operators. Last but not least to be able to have a footprint elsewhere in Europe than in the Uk and Ireland.

If you want to know more about recent social networking trends, see my colleagues' view here.