Bebo

Senior Software Engineer · 2006–2008 · San Francisco

Senior Software Engineer (3rd hire) building social advertising infrastructure, targeting and analytics tools, and sponsorship systems.

This was 2006-2008, ending with AOL's acquisition of Bebo. As the third engineering hire, I built Bebo's early social-advertising stack from the ground up: three production systems shipped from that work, spanning ad products, targeting and analytics, and branded campaign tooling.

• Oracle
• Java/JSP
• JavaScript

• Social ads

  Built ad products, targeting, analytics, sponsorship systems, and placement workflows.

• Brand campaigns

  Created custom emoticons, profile takeovers, branded content, and campaign measurement mechanics.

• Social platform

  Built product and ad systems during Bebo's independent growth and AOL acquisition period.

1. Early social advertising system

   Social advertising

   Managed development of ad products for Bebo's social environment: placement logic, sponsorship surfaces, targeting, analytics, and attribution workflows. Translated brand-advertiser needs into product mechanics inside a social network before social ad tooling had become standardized.

   SourcesBeboAOL Buys Bebo For $850 Million
2. 

   Skittles sponsored profile and custom emoticons

   Branded campaign

   Designed custom Skittles emoticons as an extension to Bebo's sponsored profile package, giving the sales team a native social mechanic to bring to brand campaigns. The emoticons shipped as part of a larger paid campaign pairing branded profile skins, interactive modules, and candy-themed expression inside Bebo's social surfaces.

3. Targeting, analytics, and attribution

   Measurement

   Developed analytics and attribution support for campaigns running inside Bebo. Connected targeting, performance measurement, and partner-facing reporting so social ads could be evaluated as productized media rather than one-off placements.

   SourcesBebo acquisition by AOLBebo Launches New Homepage, Its Take on LifestreamingAOL Relaunches Promising but Ill-Fated Bebo Social NetworkAOL Buys Bebo For $850 Million

About Bebo

Bebo was one of the major social networks of the mid-2000s, with user profiles, social graph behavior, branded content, and advertising products arriving before today's social ad infrastructure became familiar.

Related context

• AOL buys Bebo for $850 million

  TechCrunch • March 2008: acquisition context

• Bebo public history

  Reference context for Bebo's social-network era

• Archived Bebo web presence

  Wayback Machine snapshots of the product period

• Bebo Crunchbase profile

  Public company context for Bebo.