Meebo

Meebo (often stylized as meebo) was an instant messaging and social networking service provider. It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California.[1] Initially the company offered a web-based instant messenger service, extending its offer in more general online chat and even social networking directions. In June 2012, Google acquired Meebo to merge the company's staff with the Google+ developers team.[7]

Meebo
Word "Meebo" with stylized orange-blue capital Latin letter "M"
Screenshot
Page showing sign-in widget, recent news items and links to description pages about Meebo's features
Meebo's homepage as of December 2011.
Type of site
Instant messager, social networking service
FoundedSeptember 14, 2005 (2005-09-14)[1]
HeadquartersMountain View, California,
USA
OwnerGoogle
Founder(s)Sandy Jen, Elaine Wherry, Seth Sternberg[2]
CEOSeth Sternberg
ProductsCommunity IM, Meebo Bar and Meebo Me
ServicesMeebo Messenger, Meebo Rooms
URLwww.meebo.com
IPv6 supportNo
AdvertisingYes[3]
RegistrationOptional[4]
Users250 million monthly (2011)[5]
LaunchedSeptember 2005 (2005-09)[2]
Current statusDiscontinued
Native client(s) onAndroid, BlackBerry, iOS[6]

History

After the initial period when the project was funded exclusively by its founders, Meebo raised $100,000 as angel investments (investors included Auren Hoffman and Marc Andreessen), received $3.5 million from Sequoia in 2005, and $9 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2006.[1][8][9]

On August 2, 2006, Meebo launched the Flash-based "Meebo Me" chat window widget for personal websites, which automatically added visitors to the site owner's Meebo Messenger contact list, offering the possibility to start a realtime chat both to site owner and visitor[10] In May 2007, Meebo launched media-enabled chat rooms (Rooms) that can be embedded in any website page. At this point, Meebo still didn't have a revenue model.[11]

In April 2008, Meebo secured $25 million in venture capital funding from Jafco Investment, Time Warner and KTB Investment & Securities.[12] In December 2008, Meebo started offering a "Community IM" integration widget, which was targeted at community-oriented sites and provided Meebo's services at third-party locations.[13] A year later, in December 2009, Community IM was replaced with "Meebo Bar", a gadget that could be integrated by third parties into their site, providing advanced chat functionality to their users.[6]

While initially operating on web access to the instant messaging market, Meebo expanded its offerings in the increasingly popular social network services. In February 2009, Meebo added Facebook Messenger to its list of supported instant messengers.[14]

During the rise of the new generation of smartphone operating systems, Meebo released mobile applications for all major platforms: Android, iOS and BlackBerry.[6] In February 2010, after being among the first to launch an iPhone app, Meebo released a fully-fledged native iPhone app.[15]

In May 2010, the original Meebo Rooms service was discontinued, and the feature was ultimately removed in October 2011. In February 2011, Meebo acquired Mindset Media advertising company to improve its ads targeting.[16]

On June 4, 2012, Meebo announced that they had entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google.[7] A month later, on July 11, 2012, all of Meebo's products were discontinued except for Meebo Bar, which remained operational until June 6, 2013.[17][18] Meebo's staff was assigned to Google+ development.[7]

Meebo was also used as a hack for users to connect to their instant messaging accounts in school or office networks that blocked such applications.[19]

Products

Messenger

Meebo Messenger, Meebo's initial offering, was a browser-based instant messaging application which supported multiple IM services (Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, ICQ, MySpaceIM, Facebook Chat and Google Talk).[20][13] Features of Meebo Messenger included invisible sign-on, simultaneous uniform access to multiple IM services and conversation logging.[4][6] File transfer and videoconferencing features were subsequently added to the application.[21] Notification system was also available for Windows users via a standalone installable notifier, which could also maintain user's presence. Registered Meebo users could save their login information, so that all IM connections would be automatically established upon logging into Meebo.[22]

The application maintained a single unified contact list for all user's accounts, attributing contacts to instant messaging protocols by placing protocols' logos in front of them, although not showing contact's avatars. The application automatically dealt with contacts invitations and approvals. Social features of the messenger included online games, multi-user chat (via Meebo Rooms), currently played track name sharing and support for social networks' messaging protocols. (Albeit Meebo Messenger didn't notify of updates in social networks.)[22]

Rooms

Meebo Rooms was an advertising-supported multi-user chat service. Meebo partnered with blip.tv, Capitol Music Group, CNET Networks, NBC Universal and others to provide readily available rooms on their websites, so that users could discuss sites' content while consuming it.[23] Meebo Rooms were available from Meebo Messenger and via third-party social networking sites including Piczo, Revision3, RockYou, and Tagged.[3]

Meebo Rooms supported up to 80 simultaneous participants granted a degree of control to the host, allowing to invite and ban chat participants.[8][24]

References
  1. Guynn, Jessica (January 21, 2007). "Dot-Com on the Cheap: Startups shun forebears' excesses, and some workers even bring their own chairs". SFGate. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved August 14, 2012.
  2. Torkington, Nat (July 12, 2006). "A Week in the Valley: Meebo". O'Reilly Radar. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
  3. Gonsalves, Antone (February 1, 2008). "Meebo Offers Tools To Embed Ad-Carrying Chat Rooms". InformationWeek. Archived from the original on July 16, 2019. Retrieved January 16, 2012.
  4. Cubrilovic, Nik (February 19, 2006). "Meebo: More Features, Continued Growth". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  5. Schonfeld, Erick (November 15, 2011). "Meebo Now Reaches 250 Million People Across The Web". TechCrunch. Retrieved July 11, 2013.
  6. Griffith, Eric (July 9, 2012). "The Best Picks to Replace Meebo". PC Magazine. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  7. Wagner, Kyle (June 4, 2012). "Google Is Buying Meebo". Gizmodo. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  8. Arrington, Michael (May 14, 2007). "Meebo Launches Meebo Rooms (oh, and Meebo now has ads)". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  9. Suster, Mark (February 8, 2011). "How Meebo Got Started And Its Strategy To Make The Web More Social". Business Insider. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  10. Arrington, Michael (August 2, 2006). "Meebo Launches MeeboMe". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  11. Needleman, Rafe (May 15, 2007). "Meebo launching media-enabled chat rooms". Cnet.com. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  12. Arrington, Michael (April 30, 2008). "It's Official: Meebo Raises $25 Million From Jafco, Time Warner and KTB". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  13. "Even More IM at Meebo: Facebook and MySpace IM Added". ReadWrite. Archived from the original on October 17, 2012. Retrieved July 11, 2013.
  14. Stone, Brad (February 5, 2009). "Instant Messaging Site Meebo Adds Facebook Chat". The New York Times. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  15. Herrman, John (February 17, 2010). "Meebo Is the New King of iPhone Messaging Apps". Gizmodo.com. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  16. Kincaid, Jason (February 8, 2011). "Meebo Acquires Mindset Media, Prepares To Venture Into Direct Response Advertising". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  17. Moscaritolo, Angela (June 11, 2012). "After Google Acquisition, Meebo Shutting Down July 11". PC Magazine. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  18. Weiss, Todd R. (April 29, 2013). "Google Discontinuing Meebo Bar Chat, Sharing Services". eWeek. Retrieved August 7, 2013.
  19. "MSN web messenger". Msnheaven.com. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
  20. Harris, Scott Duke (July 17, 2008). "Ambitious Meebo picks up partners: Offers web-based messaging". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  21. Popa, Bogdan (September 11, 2007). "Meebo Gets File Sharing Features. Yahoo Messenger Users Overjoyed!". Softpedia. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  22. Muchmore, Michael (August 3, 2010). "Meebo". PC Magazine. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  23. Macmanus, Richard (May 15, 2007). "Meebo Rooms Launched - "like a very very rich widget"". ReadWrite. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  24. Green, Heather (June 3, 2007). "Crunch Time At A Web Startup". Bloomberg Businessweek. Archived from the original on August 15, 2012. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
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