why do you think bebo is so popular?

erinperin

ok not sure if this is the right forum to be posting this in but there are so many! anyway, im doing an assignment on social networking sites, specifically bebo, and was wondering if anyone had any opinions on why so many people use the website while many others laugh at the idea and think users are just sad or childish? any thoughts would be appreciated

biko

I don't know, young people reaching out to others is always popular?

The_B_Man

its a hang out online. ya can leave messages and pictures and quizzes and organise stuff and have info on there that ur friends can see. plus photos of all the piss ups ya went on so ya can laugh and joke about them. also, its possible for some socialisin on it. i predict it'll replace phones to a degree. in fact, last sat night, instead of gettin a phone number for 2 stunners, i got their bebo pages. shockin i know! at least i got a real phone number off another girl!

but ye, bebo is jsut fun. its colourful. its a way to stay connected. its easy to use. easy to stay in touch, u can check in on old friends and see wat they're up to. it has everything bar "real life" socialising, which you can, of course, organise thru bebo!

WindSock

and there's the stalking....

InFront

to keep in touch with people, to build up social contacts and eventually take over the world, to draw nice pictures. is there a poll coming?

Call Me Jimmy

I think the fact that anyone can see yer page is big a deal. So instead of talking to yer friend on msn ye can use bebo so other people will see all the 'wacky' stuff your saying - "Aw man you were SOOO wrecked last night, by the end of the night ye were singin' celine dion!! ye comin out next week, get lashed!"

Same with the photo album, everyone knows loadsa people are gonna be lookin at it so they upload all their drinking sessions and 'empty-beer-can-pyramids' to show how they drunk so much coz they are mad. And every **** on bebo has at least one picture of them in that pose where they look off into the distance with a hand on their chin.

Before anyone says anything, yes I am cynical and bitter so don't think yer smart with yer little psycho-analysis.

Okie

Hmmmm....

//Okie rubs index finger along Call Me Jimmy's forehead//

Bitter!:D

Not on Bebo myself. Not a fan. Never got in on it.

DS

Very accurate I think Jimmy. The fact that nearly every form of interaction on bebo is public radically changes the way it is used. It's not just innocent socializing, this is just the medium by which people shamelessly (or subconsciously) self promote. Because most people are stupid, this results in a circus of bad jokes and bland, brainless conversation. An hour on bebo is enough to make yourself ill from cynicism. It's not the people's fault, the way it's set up forces them to behave a certain way.

Rb

Call Me Jimmy wrote:

I think the fact that anyone can see yer page is big a deal. So instead of talking to yer friend on msn ye can use bebo so other people will see all the 'wacky' stuff your saying - "Aw man you were SOOO wrecked last night, by the end of the night ye were singin' celine dion!! ye comin out next week, get lashed!"

Same with the photo album, everyone knows loadsa people are gonna be lookin at it so they upload all their drinking sessions and 'empty-beer-can-pyramids' to show how they drunk so much coz they are mad. And every **** on bebo has at least one picture of them in that pose where they look off into the distance with a hand on their chin.

Before anyone says anything, yes I am cynical and bitter so don't think yer smart with yer little psycho-analysis.

It definately has that side to it.

Similarly the "friend list" seems to be a form of competition amongst bebo users, the more "friends" on the list, the "cooler" the user is...I suppose.

Don't use bebo personally, prefer my privacy, but I can see how it does appeal to others. Keeps people in contact, gets people in contact with those they may not have heard from in a while etc.

Call Me Jimmy

rb_ie wrote:

Similarly the "friend list" seems to be a form of competition amongst bebo users, the more "friends" on the list, the "cooler" the user is...I suppose.

Definately. For example, one girl I hadn't seen for a while requested that I be added to her friends list (I can't really remember how it works) but she never left a message or anything. So that was pretty blatant. I almost pity people who care that much about having one extra person on their friends list, but then I remember they have it way better than me anyway hah

YeatsCounty

The popularity aspect has been pretty well covered so far, so may I mention that the dire programming should make it extremely unpopular? The amount of times that I have tried to post a message on a friend's page only to be told "you can't post a message on your profile", or trying to edit my profile only to be told that I can't edit my friend's profile (I am now magically in a friend's profile for some reason, wtf?) or trying to look at photos in a photo album.......click on photo #5 of 10 and I'm taken straight to the "end of the album" page. Urgh. :mad:

(Run on sentences ftw.)

spurious

The main reason it is popular among school kids is because they can send text-like messages to each other when they have no credit.

There is some truly hideous bullying going on on Bebo, though in fairness, they are usually very quick about removing offensive pages once they are reported.

Plug

When you can't affort credit theres always bebo:)

Nalz

I agree with Jimmy. Yeah bebo has its upsides etc, but too many down sides for me. I wrote a detailed post on another site about this a while back so Im not going to go to deep into it, but the fact of the matter is from every angle bebo is not "just fun". Was on it a year ago, two mates used my page as a battlefield betweem them...never again. A pile of American teenybop shít

Sierra Oscar

I never really got into it....I think its a farce!

Mrs_Doyle

I really like bebo because its cheaper then txting, and its a great way to keep in touch with people who have moved away.
This makes me feel really old, but, when I left school, mobiles and texting where not as popular as they are now, so I lost touch with a lot of people.
In the last 6 months I have got in touch with loads of my old school pals, via bebo, and I have kept in touch with them from there.

When I was in 1st-3rd year I had a best pal, we thought we would be friends for life, but then I went onto 5th year and she went into transition year and we started to drift apart.
After bumping into her on bebo we started to hang out again, and just last weekend I went along to her Hen night and met up with loads of old school friends, it was great.

I love looking at my old friends, (especially the ones who have moved a little further away), photo's and reading their blogs, and just keeping up to date on whats going on in their lives.

Hail 2 Da Chimp

I was looking at bebo there last week and I seen pictures of girls kissing... It is now my new favourite website!

JC 2K3

No one "goes on the internet" anymore, they just "go on bebo".

Bebo is no different to sites like Myspace or Livejournal, however it just happened to be created(probably coincidentially) at exactly the right time to attract Irish teenagers. Broadband was really just beginning to become common and more and more teenagers(as well as people in their 20s I guess) were discovering things on the internet like MSN Messenger, Myspace, forums and the likes. However, Bebo attracted them with gimmicks such as having to sign up to do friends' quizzes etc. and its user friendly nature made it accessible to your average technically impaired teenager.

Unfortunately, it's destroyed a lot of potentially intelligent conversation and interaction which young people used to engage in on the internet. I had a simple phpBB forum running 2 years ago which many people I knew as well as other people from my school whom I didn't know used to post on. Yes there were light conversations and comments like there is on Bebo now, but there were also much more intelligent threads disscussing other matters. Similarly websites like Teen Ireland used to get a lot of hits and have at least semi-intelligent interaction amongst teenagers. However, since the coming of Bebo, sites like these are extinct. It's an awful pity really. I'd even say there were a lot more teenagers on boards before Bebo came(Ok, so it filters out retards, but there are a lot of potentially good posters who simply do not know the internet beyond Bebo).

sioda

The photo sharing does it for me find it handy for pics of party's wedding etc that a group of people linked via Bebo mite have been at.

Yeah I know there are other methods but it works for me

zuutroy

No interest in it. Couldnt give a flying **** what anyone I went to school with is doing now.

JustCoz

As has been mentioned, it's a great way to keep in touch with people who have moved away, like my brother is in Australia for a year and he's crap at keeping in touch but he joined bebo and now I can talk to him alot more. It's cheaper than texting, and for students, what better way to spend a 3 hour lecture than on bebo?!

On the downside it does have that stalker element, and you end up recognising people just from bebo, and them you. I made my page private recently because I don't really like the thought of just anyone looking at your bebo page

Sarky

I find it vaguely useful, I must admit, long-time-no-see-friends from college and all that. When you ignore the 95-odd percent of pages that are just desperate, badly-spelled cries for attention (which is surely why it's so popular with teenagers), it's not all that bad.

Kinetic^

Because of stuff like "Project Russell".

Sinfonia

Sarky wrote:

I find it vaguely useful, I must admit, long-time-no-see-friends from college and all that. When you ignore the 95-odd percent of pages that are just desperate, badly-spelled cries for attention (which is surely why it's so popular with teenagers), it's not all that bad.

Yeah that's very accurate

Photos are good too, but would be a hell of a lot better if they didn't take a year to upload.

Don't like people putting up their 'Likes' and 'Dislikes' and what not -
Music
Like omg i loooooove music, my tastes are so varied!! Really into the Killers right now, but i mean ya gotta love a bit of the kooks and razorlight!!

Films
(general ****e)

Likes
Banter

Dislikes
Ramdomers, being on buses like omg so disgusting

Happiest When
being a twat

:mad: :mad: :mad:

That sort of 'look at me' **** really gets on my tits

rant over

deisedolly

OP, you in MMA1 in DCU? Still havn't managed to even go about starting that feckin assignment

NutJob

deisedolly wrote:

OP, you in MMA1 in DCU? Still havn't managed to even go about starting that feckin assignment

LOL


Because DCU studens do there research on boards

JPA

I don't use Bebo (I prefer my privacy) but I have no problem with people using it. It's a good laugh for looking at photos and that but what I don't really understand is people saying "Talk to ya on Bebo later".
Have these people never heard of MSN Messenger or google talk or any of these IM programs.
It's like saying "I'll talk to ya on Boards later".

PiE

NutJob wrote:

LOL
Because DCU studens do there research on boards

You'd be quite surprised as to just who does use boards for research purposes.

Thrill

It's popular because it's "all the rage" or "because it's cool" at the moment, imo. People think they have to have one to fit in and be one of the guy's/girl's.

One of these day's people will see it as being uncool and will see anyone on bebo as just a nerd and you will see it come to a grinding stop.

pariko

To my mind, the huge popularity of Bebo amongst school kids is essentially rooted in A) narcissism and a desire for fame, or at least to be noticed by a wider audience than one would otherwise. Saying that it's handy for staying in touch with people and cheaper than texting is all well and good - I'd wager that this is coming from slightly older guys and gals - but Bebo hasn't suddenly gifted these technologies to the internet, it's just dumbed them down.

Anyway, as I was saying, the single biggest reason that Bebo is so popular amongst teenagers, and perhaps people in their early twenties too, is that people love indulging in themselves, promoting themselves, talking about themselves in the "public eye" and, obviously, furthering their image amongst their peers. Bebo's essentially tapping into the same rich psychological vein that televised reality TV talent shows have been plumbing for a few years now - look at me everybody! I'm great! I wanna be on the computer screen, I want people to look at pictures of me, I want people to read about my life. This is what I'm doing in school/college. This is how much I drank last night. This is my boyfriend. This is the definition of my existence, and it's better than yours.

Bebo provides cheap, narcissistic thrills. Uploading pictures of oneself, writing quizzes about oneself, detailing the miniutae of one's life - it's all nauseatingly self-centred stuff if you ask me.

MooseJam

there was a report published there recently, i'll post a link if i find it, that indicated bebo is the prefered method of communication among Irish gay's, and in fact up to 38% of male users of bebo are in fact gay