Bebo Beefing With Facebook?

When Bebo lauched their platform last year, they made it insanely easy for developers to convert their Facebook applications over. That may have been a bad idea. Facebook’s upcoming update next month is going to substantially change the integration process for developers. Rather than being a breeze to transfer applications, it’s now going to become a little more challenging.

According to Alley Insider, Bebo’s head of platform engineering is concerned.

Steve’s worried that Facebook’s upcoming redesign, the one that’s going to limit the spread of new apps, will also make it more difficult to move new Facebook apps to Bebo. So the network has to decide whether it’s going to change its own platform, yet again, to match Facebook’s. If Bebo doesn’t, Cohen says, it’ll lose out:

“Facebook really threw a monkey wrench in the whole compatibility thing….If we’re not compatible with Facebook, no one is going to develop for our platform.”

Additionally, it appears that the head of platform engineering isn’t as concerned about OpenSocial. He’s convinced that the Facebook platform is still the platform that matters. Looks like Bebo is going to be facing some difficult decisions in the coming months. Also, I can’t imagine that Facebook is too concerned about this issue. Ultimately, Facebook and Bebo are technically competitors.

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