But what about the content which is published on these pages? The content on your news feed is completely out of your control, you rely on the things being; posted, shared, uploaded and updated, by the connections in your network. Of course this content can be relevant to your interest, if you share interests with all of your connections, but this doesn’t usually happen.
Enter beBee, a content generation social platform which is completely affinity based. Launched to the public in February of 2015, by Javier Cámara and Juan Imaz, beBee merges the social and professional sides of life in a way which delivers relevant and meaningful content to its users. “The creation of beBee came from a realization of the little amount of relevance which content, posted on other social media had to the user’s actual interest” explained Javier Cámara, CEO of beBee, in a recent interview. Javier explained the simple setup of beBee in their own terms. Users, referred to as bees, post content, referred to as honey, and generate trend, referred to as buzz. But how do they make sure that the content is relevant to the interest of their “bees”?
“That is simple” stated Javier “we ask the bees to join different hives, or interest centered groups, so they can decide the kind of content generated on their feed”. Content created is then assigned to hives and this then appears in the feeds of the users accordingly. This can also be translated into the professional world as you can find content relevant to your job by joining hives which provide you with content on your profession.
“We wanted to create a network which was highly democratic and diverse in nature” Javier mentioned, explaining that content is voted on relevance only by users meaning that the more relevant to the hive the higher it will be featured in your newsfeed. They also launched the platform in 3 different languages, from the start, which allowed them to reach a more diverse audience. This also means that they needed to hire a diverse staff which can communicate to their audience in their native languages. “Effective communication is not achieved by merely knowing the language of your audience” Javier insisted “you need to understand cultural nuances in order to communicate as effectively as possible”.
Diversity was indeed a visible aspect in the working culture at beBee with a total of 53 workers, in their main hub, from 12 different nationalities. They have also recently expanded to include a New York office to ensure that they can also gain a stronger following in the United States. All of this effort seems to be paying off as beBee was been invited to a conference, in the US, in which they presented their mission and vision, along with another 18 European startups, to compete for a sizeable investment in order to grow further and continue to bring users highly engaging and relevant content!
