Interview: Adam Levin, CEO of Bebo

Bebo has been one of those social networks that keeps on ticking. After being snatched up by AOL for $850 million only to get dumped by the Internet pioneer, the company recently made some strong management moves to position themselves for growth.

Recently, I had the chance to interview Adam Levin, CEO of Bebo, about the company’s future and the very competitive social media landscape.

TR: Tell me a little about the new hires and how they will help drive your business.

Levin: We couldn’t be more excited about Akash [Garg] and Aren [Sandersen] joining this team. They are both certifiable geniuses. Important to Bebo, each has an incredible skill set that combines deep technical knowledge, understanding of social behaviors – and the social networking landscape, operational acumen and business savvy. It’s not easy to find one person with all those attributes. We were lucky enough to find two who have the enthusiasm, integrity and ability to help Bebo grow.

As for each’s role…

Obviously Akash has a great track record as the co-founder of hi5 will lead a group of engineers to work out product roadmaps, implement features, spearhead technical partnerships and be the go-to guy for taking an idea and turning it into a product Bebo users will enjoy. Since he started just a couple of weeks ago, he has already amassed a huge volume of user input, identified dozens of new exciting opportunities for users to engage with each other and put some exciting things into place for Bebo going forward.

Aren brings tremendous skill and acumen as a lead engineer of successful platforms such as Oodle, where he was the first employee. But he also brings a genius type logic to operations. While he will certainly contribute his engineering prowess, in the first few weeks he has been at Bebo, he has been optimizing everything about Bebo’s operations. Not only has he created enormous cost savings starting on day one, he has worked to make Bebo’s infrastructure more efficient and highly scalable.

TR: Where do you think Bebo fits into the social media landscape and what sets you apart from other social networks?

Levin: First of all, our hats are off to Facebook for driving huge adoption and helping people get used to the idea of social networking. However, we don’t believe Facebook will be the end all be all for social networking. As an industry, social networking is still in its infancy and there is plenty of room for growth on two sides of the equation.

First, from the perspective of the consumer, what people can and will do on social networks going forward will continue to evolve and we plan to innovate around those changing behaviors. Second, from a business perspective, there are billions of people in the world who aren’t on any type of social network. As smart phones and internet speeds continue to proliferate, there is a real opportunity for social networks to help those people connect and share value in a very personal, social way.

More to the point of the question: how does Bebo fit in? Factually, we have retained million of young users who appreciate the advanced personalization only Bebo offers- especially in the UK, Ireland and the Queen’s countries so to speak. And many don’t realize we have 5-7 million young people per month coming from the states.

We are also seeing incredible engagement through mobile, which has grown to nearly a billion page views on mobile alone and will continue to as more people get into location based networking. Secondarily, from user feedback, we hear a lot about Bebo as “not my parents’ social network” and the perfect place for fostering niche communities. So, where we fit into the landscape is ultimately defined and driven by the masses and to date what we have that most networks don’t is a young rabid user base.

TR: What are some of the challenges your company faces in light of all the competition in social media?

Devin: Our big challenges are two-fold; 1. to give Bebo’s 117 million registered users a compelling reason to engage on our platform and 2. to evolve the platform so that it meets the ever-evolving needs of users today and five years from now.

TR: what’s in the future for Bebo and what can users expect that would be different?

Devin: I cannot get too specific on the details because much is still in the planning and partnership stages. However, it’s safe to say on the content side of things, we will work to make video a more central part of the social networking experience. From originals to easy access and sharing to all the web’s videos, we know there is a great demand for a social network that “gets” video.

We also know from demand that games “” from light social gaming to more advanced games are increasingly important, especially to our audience. So users will see more options to interact in a gaming fashion.

Mobile will also be becoming easier, more engaging and, in countries where this matters, using Bebo on the phone won’t also mean expensive data charges. More generally speaking, users will start to see many things made easier and more open. For instance, under AOL Bebo’s IM ecosystem required AIM. We will open that up.

August 19, 2010
source: technorati.com