We haven't heard much about Bebo Bands since its launch in July, but they just announced that they've hit 120,000 artists and continue to add 10,000 bands per week. It occurred to me while checking up on their stats today that despite a lack of press hype, Bebo is ripe for acquisition.
Obviously this brand of intentional stat-waving is a way to increase press interest (and the acquisition price, if that's the game), so it's wise to take this info with a pinch of salt. Also note that MySpace Music claims 3 million artist accounts - even with the usual stat padding, they're still way out in the lead. As mentioned previously, Bebo Bands lets users create playlists, launch a player in a new browser window while they move around the site and gain access to exclusive content from the likes of Panic! at the Disco and P. Diddy.
Even so, it seems that Bebo is doing better than many assume - a lack of PR in the US is probably to blame (Piczo faces the same problem). Bebo only launched in July 2005 and claims 27 million accounts (pinch of salt, as always) and 4 billion monthly pageviews. But if you only trust third party sources, note that they're also ranked number one in the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand according to Nielsen, Hitwise and Media Metrix. But Bebo's success in those countries is well-known: what's more amazing is that ComScore ranks them as the third biggest network in the US based on uniques and pageviews - only MySpace and Facebook are ahead. None of those stats should be taken alone, but combined with what we already know about Bebo, and some of the other stats I have access to, everything points to an upward trend. And lets not forget that unlike MySpace, Bebo is well-designed and fun to use.