Bebo Experiences Growing Pains

Launching a social platform can be a daunting task especially if you build it in less than a year. That’s exactly what Bebo did when it launched its platform last month. Since then thousands of developers have contributed close to 1,300 applications on the site and it has become the second largest platform (then again it’s the only other alternative platform to Facebook currently). As a result of their platform launch, the site suffered increasing downtime.

It appears that the site is on pace to surpass their downtime from the previous month after suffering more then 190 minutes of downtime this month so far. It’s well known that the launch of social platforms rapidly reduce a site’s performance. Last month reports were released that showed Facebook being the slowest social network.

At this point slow social networks appear to be a fact of life. If you can recall back to when MySpace experienced their exponential growth, the site appeared to be down for a substantial amount of time on a daily basis. Looks like Bebo is suffering from the same illness. It appears contagious so hopefully Orkut doesn’t catch the same cold when they launch their social platform.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.