Bebo’s Growth Spurt Plateaus, but Traffic Remains Steady
Everybody was buzzing last month about Bebo, the social network that experienced unprecedented growth in March, achieving a monumental 49% increase in unique traffic to their website.
Although networks like Facebook grew more into terms of total users over the same period, Bebo took the prize for the fastest rate of growth; at 49% growth month to month, Bebo was far ahead of the pack.
Since AOL’s acquisition earlier this year of the Bebo network, traffic to the UK-based social network had increased dramatically, due in part to AOL’s decision to begin porting their profiles over to Bebo in March and integrating their online and IM clients with the social network. While the move to acquire a pre-existing social network isn’t unique among the old portal giants (Yahoo acquired Del.icio.us and MyBlogLog), the immediate explosion in the growth of monthly unique visitors to Bebo’s network was.
When the April numbers came in, however, it became apparent that the massive spike was in growth rate was, largely, a one-time thing. However, the modest drop in the growth rate (-5%) indicates that Bebo is doing a good job of keeping traffic at their current levels – which is still significantly higher than it was before. Although the rate of growth may have slowed, the amount of traffic seems to be remaining steady – meaning that opportunities on the Bebo network are significantly better for both advertisers and publishers than they were before the March spike.
The integration of Bebo and AOL began in March, as did the bump in traffic. As more and more AOL users begin to populate their Bebo profiles and network with the pre-existing body of Bebo users, this bump in traffic can be expected to sustain for some time.
