Origins of BeBee

Where did BeBee come from? Twenty years ago, social media did not exist. I did not even have internet connection at work or at home. Mobile phones were rare, and those on the market doubled as doorstops. How things have changed. Today 2,8 Billion people use social media. Right now, you are one of them, logged on to beBee. How did BeBee evolve?

1997 - I SEEK YOU

The start of social media can be traced back to 1997, to a website called Six Degrees. Named after the six degrees of separation theory, it allowed users to create a profile and befriend others. Six Degrees had 3 million users. Across the divide, in Spain, Juan Imaz started Mixmail, a site and email server. Mixmail and a later venture with Javier beBee called Canalmail, are the great-grandparents of beBee. At the same time ICQ appeared, an Israeli company that developed an instant messaging service. ICQ is derived from: “I seek you”. At its peak ICQ had 100 million users.

2000 - MYSPACE AND OUR SPACE

By the year 2000, around 100 million people had access to the internet and online engagement became more widespread. Increasingly people used chat rooms, discussions and personal posting as a virtual part of their social life. The younger generation (at the time) really caught on to net socialization through MySpace, started up in 2003. MySpace was the original social media profile website, popular in the music industry and today has 50 million users. Catering for professionals, LinkedIn was founded in 2003,  allowing for employers to post job adverts and individuals to post their resume’s. LinkedIn has 470 million users. Social media exploded on the internet in the next decade. 

2004 - TWEETING POLITICIANS

Facebook started in 2004 at Harvard University - now a giant with 2 billion users. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, dropped out of Harvard to spend all their time on their new ventures. In 2006, the popularity of text messaging inspired the creation of Twitter, with its distinction of sending short tweets.Twitter has over 500 million users. Many others came; Flickr, Tumblr, Pinterest and what seems to be the trending social media platform today, Instagram, with 800 million users. Social media became widely used by business and politicians. The number one Tweet came from Nelson Mandela. Five of the most popular Tweets from Barack Obama. And of course today there are the torrential Tweets of Trump...

2008 - SOCIAL BUSINESS 

Media Response, another venture of Juan and Javier, started in 2008 and in the growing online business sphere provided digital advertising services to businesses in nine different countries. More websites started to list their social media addresses, businesses would include Facebook and Twitter addresses on their television commercials and many tools were built to include social media on websites. Social media icons were everywhere and it became almost unusual to see businesses or brands without them. Personal branding and business branding became intertwined. 

2015 - BEBEE ZOOMS IN

This brings us to beBee. Founded in February 2015, beBee is an affinity networking site, aimed to bridge the strictly business of LinkedIn and the pure sociability of Facebook. BeBee allows people to showcase their personal brand and market themselves to employers, clients, customers, and media. It is a great site for blogging, posting and sharing content with other users and onto other platforms. Based on blockchain technology, in February 2018 BeBee signed an agreement with Profede which will allow businesses to make customized offers directly to professionals based on their reputation and profiles through a decentralized platform. Today BeBee has 12 million users, spread across the globe.

And here I am, one of them, looking back at where it all came from.