Of all the people in the world you’d like to have communicating with alien leaders in a potential “first contact” scenario, would Bebo users really be the #1 choice? Well, that’s what’s happening, as the social networking site’s users’ suggestions for images and text to send into space as part of its ‘A Message From Earth’ project have been… sent into space.

501 messages from Bebo users – including photos of Richard and Judy and pop band McFly’s opinions on Cheryl Cole – were sent off from Ukraine’s National Space Agency yesterday in a fantastic waste of everyone’s time. Here’s Bebo’s sensational illustration of how sending messages into space works:

The messages will take a shade over 20 years…