Bebo: In Depth Review (bebo.com)

Member Name: gavallan2020

Product:	bebo.com
Date:	07/06/09 (137 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: loads of features good safety/privacy easy to use massive, ever growing community

Disadvantages: decreased photo/video quality in profiles

Bebo is one of the most popular social networking sites on the net. It does tend to be more popular amongst the younger age group (up to 20) and facebook dominates from there onwards. On the whole, I think Bebo is a very good site for staying connected with friends. It offers many features which I will go over in the review. On the safety side of things, Bebo is one of the best social Networking sites out. For starters you can choose whether to make your profile public or private. With private, only friends can see your profile (photos, details etc.). In public mode anybody can view yours, but its up to you. Bebo also forces you not to show your age if you are under 21, a very good feature in my opinion.

Photos

Bebo allows you to share photos, videos, make quizzes and polls and sent comments/mail to friends. In the photos side of things, you can have as many albums as you like. Each album is limited to a maximum of 48 photos. Only your top 12 albums will be shown on your immediate page. The only downside to the photos is that Bebo now automatically lowers the file size of your photos to x kb. This allows for faster uploading but far worse quality at the same time.

Videos

Videos are shown in the "Video Box" on your page. Videos can be uploaded in 2 ways; A URL (web address) from Youtube, or from your computer/camera/phone etc. Recently a new feature has been added to Bebo which allows you to edit your videos which have been uploaded from personal means. Like the photo albums, you can choose your top videos in order. All of the videos will be in the "video box" but only the top 3 will be shown immediately, the rest will be shown by scrolling along.

Applications

Like Facebook, applications plays a big role in Bebo. There are tens of thousands of apps. on Bebo ready for download onto your profile. Some of the most popular contain: Compare People app. - Mindjolt Games - Typing Speed and many more. Whether its games, doing keepie ups on a computer or even checking out your IQ. Bebo will have it. You can choose which applications you want to show on your profile and which are to be kept off your immediate page in a sub-page. There is another, smaller part to Bebo which I will put into this section as its not big enough for it's own. On your profile you can add a widget(s) . These may be either countdowns (to christmas, your Birthday or any other occassion), a "hotlist" of all your favourite things (moving pictures) or you can even adopt a virtual pet! Widgets are fun to mess about with if you get bored.

Comments/Mail

The communicating side of Bebo is very good in my opinion. You can post comments on your friends pages. Note: other people can read these if they are friends with the person you commented. Every day you can post up to 3 "luvs". Your total "luvs" adds up in your profile, indicating how active you are on Bebo really. If you want to send mail privately then the "mail" section of Bebo will suit you. In this section you will find an inbox, sent messages, saved messages and the option to "compose". Its really like your own email within Bebo.

Quizzes and Polls

You can base your quizzes around any topic you want. For the "how well do you know ______" quiz. Bebo kindly offers you examples of questions which you can use if you get stuck. Once your Quiz is complete you friends can take it and their results will be posted on the Quiz Results page. Again, Polls can be based on anything you want. Every Poll is allowed one question and 5 options/answers. For every option, an image can be added to better explain them. Once the poll is complete, again, your friends can take it and the results will be shown in the form of percentages.

Other Features

The other features of Bebo include; blogs, themes and the "wall". Blogs don't tend to play that big a part in most people's profiles. If you want you can post a topic and your friends can reply to it. Much like an ordinary blog. For your page you can choose your own theme (a.k.a "skins:) . There are tens of thousands of skins on Bebo to choose from. They range through almost anything you can imagine. From Buggatti Veyrons to jokes about killer marshmallows- lol. If you change your theme, then the appearance of your page is changed accordingly. Generally your main picture at the top of your page is changed and the top and bottom of each module (friends box, comments module etc.) is also changed according to the theme you have selected. "The Wall" on Bebo is an opportunity for your friends to leave behind a brick on your page which will eventually build up into a wall; hence the name. Each friends is allowed 1 brick and it can be painted any way you want using the bebo painter.

One last thing, on Bebo you can select your top friends and put them in order on your page. You don't have to do this as you can imagine, some people may get upset by it. There is also no limit to the amount of friends you can have. Although you can only add so many (either 50 or 100) friends through the friends' friends finder (you can guess what this does). Groups and Bands is the final feature on Bebo. You can join as many groups/bands as you like. You can create your own as well. Each group stands for a different thing (for example; the Irn Bru Group, Smarties fan club and even "R.I.P Blue Smartie" Group). The bands that you join basically means you are a fan of them. The official Bands made by the Band themselves will come up in orange writing "official" at the bottom of their display picture.

So theres your 1000 word guide to Bebo (if you read it all lol). Overall, since Bebo is free, its well worth a go. There are so many features to choose from and the Bebo community is massive. So no doubt you could find some friends on it.

Summary: Overall, since Bebo is free, its well worth a go. There are so many features as well.