Bebo.com craze in UK

In terms of "local" traffic, anyway, it looks like it's Cyworld in Korea, MySpace in the US, and Bebo in the UK. All of these sites are international, of course, but there does seem to be a cultural element to social-networking. Bebo.com has "racked up more than 22 million members" in its 13 months of existence, the BBC says, and – though targeted at people 13-30 – enjoys major traffic from school and college students. And this will sound familiar to Americans: "But this popularity has come with a price. Some schools and colleges have stopped pupils from using the site and block access to it during the school day." The BBC makes a distinction between Bebo and another popular UK-based site called Friends Reunited, a distinction that sounds like that between MySpace and Friendster.com on this side of The Pond. Friendster and Friends Reunited reportedly have more controls on the user's experience and are less about the personalization and customization so popular among teens exploring and presenting their identities. As for cultural elements, there do seem to be fewer distinctions between the English-language sites MySpace and Bebo (Cyworld's homepage is in Korean). Besides language, having online populations tied to the physical headquarters of a company may be mostly a question of marketing reach. [For more on Cyworld, see my item on it last week.]