Bebo, the social network that’s been hot on the heels of MySpace in the UK market, has now overtaken MySpace in weekly visits, according to Hitwise.

Both sites suffered a dip at the start of the summer, but the launch of Bebo Bands, Bebo’s new music service, seems to have given a huge boost to the MySpace rival. For the week ending August 5th, Bebo was the most visited social network in the UK, and its market share of visits has grown 17% in the past two weeks. 1 in every 135 UK visits goes to Bebo, which is now the 11th most visited site on the Internet.
Users also stick around on Bebo for longer - the average session time on Bebo is 28:58 minutes, while on MySpace it’s 26:26 minutes. Another interesting tidbit: Bebo is the number one social network in New Zealand. Meanwhile, Xanga leads in Hong Kong, and Friendster leads in Singapore. MySpace maintains its lead in the US and Australia.

Bebo is far less customizable than MySpace - there’s no Bebo equivalent of MySpace layouts, since users must choose between a selection of pre-made “skins”. Companies even create “sponsored skins” to advertise their products. Users also have blogs, polls and whiteboards. Bebo doesn’t have a direct competitor to MySpace Video, but they do have a “Flash box” where users can upload videos via VideoEgg or insert clips from YouTube. Nonetheless, there doesn’t seem to be any way to insert html code, which rules out 3rd party development. Bebo’s advantage is that they have network effect in the UK market: if all your friends are on Bebo, why use MySpace?

In related news, there are rumors circulating that Viacom is in talks to buy Bebo. But since we’ve already seen (inaccurate) rumors of a Bebo acquisition by BT, it’s probably best to treat this as speculation.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=bebo%2Cmyspace

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