New Bebo app resurrects old photos

Social networking site Bebo has been resurrected — and it’s brought people’s embarrassing, mid-2000s photos back from the digital graveyard along with it.

Now available as an app, Bebo relaunched just before Christmas, but has waited until now to release the old photos.

The good news is the images aren’t posted publicly — upon request the company will email a zip file to the account holder which contains images from their original profile.

Unfortunately, new Bebo doesn’t allow you to give “love” to other users — a feature many people were awaiting the return of.

Instead, the app encourages you to message other users using quirky hashtags, personalised images and “Bebojis” — Bebo-fied emoticons.

In a statement, Bebo said its new iteration was for people who “don’t take life too seriously”.

“Everybody else is trying to be very serious about social networking, which feels a bit strange to us,” it said.

Bebo began in 2005 and, at the height of its popularity in 2008, was sold to AOL for $850m. After losing most of its users to Facebook, it shut down in 2013.

Then, around 18 months ago, Bebo made a brief foray into video messaging apps with BLAB — named as one of Apple’s “Best New Apps”. This initiative soon lost steam, with users gravitating towards the like of Snapchat and Whatsapp instead.

Last year, the original founders, a husband and wife team, bought Bebo back, paying only $1m (€880,000), and got to work on its reinvention.