Bebo Social Inbox unites disparate feeds

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 11 December 2008 05:40

Business IT - Networking

Bebo's new development is a 'social inbox' on the site's home page.

According to Bebo officials, "The Social Inbox aggregates feeds and updates from Twitter, Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube, AIM ... [plus] one-click access to Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, as well as user-selected media favorites, such as videos, music and photos."

The aggregation is achieved using technology from SocialThing, which was acquired by AOL a few months ago, and is in addition to the social feeds already supported by Bebo.

"People want the ability to stay in-touch with their contacts in real-time wherever their friends may be across the Web. The current fragmented social networking environment makes keeping up-to-date with others increasingly difficult. Bebo's new Social Inbox is our first step in solving this problem," said Joanna Shields, president of AOL People Networks.

"By opening up our network to the most popular sites and allowing our users to pull in the best of the Internet, we are creating an environment where everyone can easily and effectively manage their online lives, no matter where the individual pieces reside," she added.

The company hints at additional features in "a series of scheduled releases for early 2009".

Bebo admits to "having a few hiccups" with the new home page particularly regarding Gmail integration and as a result all applications have been temporarily disabled at the time of writing.