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At around 10pm last night, the word got out - Bebo was no more. Yet is the original Irish social networking phenomenon gone for good?

Since yesterday, the once-popular social networking site Bebo has been unavailable, while last night the site's Wikipedia entry originally spoke of Bebo as a service that closed on January 30, 2012.

While many Bebo users have expressed shock and outrage over the closure, it's not due to any sense of loss from the service itself, rather they're unhappy that they never got the chance to save the 2007/2008-era photos to upload onto Facebook. However, hope may be at hand.

According to media hub Gawker, the site is only down temporarily due to technical difficulties. Or to be more specific, a Bebo spokesperson told Gawker that the ongoing outage is due to a "technical clusterfuck". The spokesperson added that Bebo still holds a niche audience in the UK and expects to launch new products soon.

Eiether way, it appears as though Bebo will be back up and running soon - although we're not quite sure how soon. That should be news to the site's co-founder and investor Michael Birch, who last night tweeted: "Am super sad that Bebo has actually gone. Some very fun times with very cool people. #RIPbebo - keep sharing that luv!"

At the height of Bebo's popularity, the site was sold to AOL in March 2008 for $850 million. 25 months later in April 2010, AOL sold the site for under $10 million to Criterion Capital Partner, suffering a staggering $840 million loss in just over two years.

Believe it or not, in March 2007 Bebo became the most-visited site in Ireland - bigger than even Google - with over 1 million users at the time. We're sure plenty of 'Bebo Skins' artists will be delighted to hear that the site isn't dead yet...