Gasta News: Bebo expands into more of Europe

Social networking site Bebo has made the leap into Europe, teaming with
local media partners to gain a foothold in France, Germany, Italy, Spain
and the Netherlands markets in which Facebook, MySpace and Netlog are
already active players.

AOLs People Networks division announced yesterday that the site will use
IP-based geo-targetting to provide services in the users first language.
This brings to six the number of language options it offers, including
English and Polish.

Bebos Open Media platform is now open to established and emerging media
brands AlloCiné, Clipfish, Telecom Italia owned Yalp!, Diagonal View and
Preview Networks’ Filmtrailer who will get a Share on Bebo button that
will allow users to share media content via status updates to their Bebo
Lifestream.

Our TechCrunch colleague-across-the-pond Robin Wauters rightly points out
that while Bebo is taking the smart approach to rolling out services across
Europe by partnering with local media organisations, they are likely to
find the competition from entrenched big media companies as well as local
players to be pretty stiff.