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Meebo

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Meebo
Screenshot
Meebo's homepage as of December 2011.
FoundedSeptember 14, 2005; 19 years ago (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; 19 years ago (2005-09)[2]

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.[8]

Corporate history and funding

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][9][10] In April 2008, Meebo secured $25 million in venture capital funding from Jafco Investment, Time Warner and KTB Investment & Securities.[11]

In February 2011, Meebo acquired Mindset Media advertising company to improve its ads targeting.[12]

On 4 June 2012, Meebo announced that they had entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google.[8] A month later, on 11 July 2012, all of Meebo's products were discontinued except for Meebo Bar, which remained operational until 6 June 2013.[13][14] Meebo's staff was assigned to Google+ development.[8]

Products and services

While initially operating on web access to the instant messaging market, Meebo expanded its offerings in the increasingly popular social network services. During the rise of the new generation of smartphone operating systems, Meebo released mobile applications for all major platforms: Android, iOS and BlackBerry.[7]

Meebo Messenger

Initially Meebo's offering was Meebo Messenger – a browser-based instant messaging application which supported multiple IM services, including Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, ICQ, MySpaceIM, Facebook Chat and Google Talk.[15][16] Features of Meebo Messenger included invisible sign-on, simultaneous uniform access to multiple IM services and conversation logging.[4][7] File transfer and videoconferencing features were subsequently added to the application.[17] 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 in to Meebo.[18]

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.)[18]

A user survey of 2005 revealed that about 33% of Meebo Messenger users couldn't use IM because of network-imposed restrictions (for example, from networks where instant messaging protocols were blocked via corporate firewall).[19]

Meebo 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.[20] 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.[9][21]

In May 2010, the original Meebo Rooms service was discontinued, and the feature was ultimately removed in October 2011.[citation needed]

Meebo services integration

On 2 August 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.[22] 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.[16] 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. In his review of possible Meebo replacements, Eric Griffith of PC Magazine listed Entertainment Weekly and Marvel Comics among widget's users, noting the profitability of this business direction of Meebo.[7]

Meebo Bar remained the last active service of Meebo before its discontinuation on 6 June 2013.[14]

References

  1. ^ a b c Guynn, Jessica (21 January 2007). "Dot-Com on the Cheap: Startups shun forebears' excesses, and some workers even bring their own chairs". SFGate. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  2. ^ a b Torkington, Nat (12 July 2006). "A Week in the Valley: Meebo". O'Reilly Radar. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  3. ^ a b Gonsalves, Antone (1 February 2008). "Meebo Offers Tools To Embed Ad-Carrying Chat Rooms". InformationWeek. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  4. ^ a b Cubrilovic, Nik (19 February 2006). "Meebo: More Features, Continued Growth". TechCrunch. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  5. ^ Schonfeld, Erick (15 November 2011). "Meebo Now Reaches 250 Million People Across The Web". TechCrunch. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  6. ^ "Meebo.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
  7. ^ a b c d Griffith, Eric (9 July 2012). "The Best Picks to Replace Meebo". PC Magazine. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  8. ^ a b c Wagner, Kyle (4 June 2012). "Google Is Buying Meebo". Gizmodo. Retrieved 7 August 2013.
  9. ^ a b Arrington, Michael (14 May 2007). "Meebo Launches Meebo Rooms (oh, and Meebo now has ads)". TechCrunch. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  10. ^ Suster, Mark (8 February 2011). "How Meebo Got Started And Its Strategy To Make The Web More Social". Business Insider. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  11. ^ Arrington, Michael (30 April 2008). "It's Official: Meebo Raises $25 Million From Jafco, Time Warner and KTB". TechCrunch. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  12. ^ Kincaid, Jason (8 February 2011). "Meebo Acquires Mindset Media, Prepares To Venture Into Direct Response Advertising". TechCrunch. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  13. ^ Moscaritolo, Angela (11 June 2012). "After Google Acquisition, Meebo Shutting Down July 11". PC Magazine. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  14. ^ a b Weiss, Todd R. (29 April 2013). "Google Discontinuing Meebo Bar Chat, Sharing Services". eWeek. Retrieved 7 August 2013.
  15. ^ Harris, Scott Duke (17 July 2008). "Ambitious Meebo picks up partners: Offers web-based messaging". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  16. ^ a b "Even More IM at Meebo: Facebook and MySpace IM Added". ReadWrite. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  17. ^ Popa, Bogdan (11 September 2007). "Meebo Gets File Sharing Features. Yahoo Messenger Users Overjoyed!". Softpedia. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  18. ^ a b Muchmore, Michael (3 August 2010). "Meebo". PC Magazine. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  19. ^ Arrington, Michael (12 December 2005). "Meebo's Impressive Growth". TechCrunch. Retrieved 26 January 2007.
  20. ^ Macmanus, Richard (15 May 2007). "Meebo Rooms Launched - "like a very very rich widget"". ReadWrite. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  21. ^ Green, Heather (3 June 2007). "Crunch Time At A Web Startup". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  22. ^ Arrington, Michael (2 August 2006). "Meebo Launches MeeboMe". TechCrunch. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
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