Instant messaging client
Meebo
|
Screenshot
Meebo's homepage as of December 2011.
|
Type of site
| Instant messager
,
social networking service
|
---|
Founded
| September 14, 2005
; 18 years ago
(
2005-09-14
)
[1]
|
---|
Headquarters
| Mountain View, California
,
|
---|
Owner
| Google
|
---|
Founder(s)
| Sandy Jen, Elaine Wherry, Seth Sternberg
[2]
|
---|
CEO
| Seth Sternberg
|
---|
Products
| Community IM, Meebo Bar and Meebo Me
|
---|
Services
| Meebo Messenger, Meebo Rooms
|
---|
URL
| www
.meebo
.com
|
---|
IPv6
support
| No
|
---|
Advertising
| Yes
[3]
|
---|
Registration
| Optional
[4]
|
---|
Users
| 250 million monthly (2011)
[5]
|
---|
Launched
| September 2005
; 18 years ago
(
2005-09
)
[2]
|
---|
Current status
| Discontinued
|
---|
Native client(s) on
| Android
,
BlackBerry
,
iOS
[6]
|
---|
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]
History
[
edit
]
Meebo's backend was originally written with
libgaim
1.5.0.
[8]
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]
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
[11]
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.
[12]
In April 2008, Meebo secured $25 million in venture capital funding from
Jafco Investment
,
Time Warner
and KTB Investment & Securities.
[13]
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.
[14]
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.
[15]
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.
[16]
In May 2010, the original Meebo Rooms service was discontinued, and the feature was ultimately removed in October 2011.
[
citation needed
]
In February 2011, Meebo acquired Mindset Media advertising company to improve its ads targeting.
[17]
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.
[18]
[19]
Meebo's staff was assigned to
Google+
development.
[7]
Meebo was also used as a workaround for users to connect to their instant messaging accounts in school or office networks that blocked such applications.
[20]
Products
[
edit
]
Messenger
[
edit
]
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
).
[21]
[14]
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.
[22]
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.
[23]
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.)
[23]
Rooms
[
edit
]
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.
[24]
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]
[25]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
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
.
- ^
a
b
Torkington, Nat (July 12, 2006).
"A Week in the Valley: Meebo"
.
O'Reilly Radar
. Retrieved
January 16,
2012
.
- ^
a
b
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
.
- ^
a
b
Cubrilovic, Nik (February 19, 2006).
"Meebo: More Features, Continued Growth"
.
TechCrunch
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
Schonfeld, Erick (November 15, 2011).
"Meebo Now Reaches 250 Million People Across The Web"
.
TechCrunch
. Retrieved
July 11,
2013
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Griffith, Eric (July 9, 2012).
"The Best Picks to Replace Meebo"
.
PC Magazine
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
a
b
c
Wagner, Kyle (June 4, 2012).
"Google Is Buying Meebo"
.
Gizmodo
. Retrieved
August 7,
2013
.
- ^
Doliner, Mark (April 24, 2008).
"Dear Blog"
.
KingAnt.net
. Retrieved
April 11,
2024
.
- ^
a
b
Arrington, Michael (May 14, 2007).
"Meebo Launches Meebo Rooms (oh, and Meebo now has ads)"
.
TechCrunch
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
Suster, Mark (February 8, 2011).
"How Meebo Got Started And Its Strategy To Make The Web More Social"
.
Business Insider
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
Arrington, Michael (August 2, 2006).
"Meebo Launches MeeboMe"
.
TechCrunch
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
Needleman, Rafe (May 15, 2007).
"Meebo launching media-enabled chat rooms"
.
Cnet.com
. Retrieved
April 15,
2019
.
- ^
Arrington, Michael (April 30, 2008).
"It's Official: Meebo Raises $25 Million From Jafco, Time Warner and KTB"
.
TechCrunch
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
a
b
"Even More IM at Meebo: Facebook and MySpace IM Added"
.
ReadWrite
. Archived from
the original
on October 17, 2012
. Retrieved
July 11,
2013
.
- ^
Stone, Brad (February 5, 2009).
"Instant Messaging Site Meebo Adds Facebook Chat"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
April 15,
2019
.
- ^
Herrman, John (February 17, 2010).
"Meebo Is the New King of iPhone Messaging Apps"
.
Gizmodo.com
. Retrieved
April 15,
2019
.
- ^
Kincaid, Jason (February 8, 2011).
"Meebo Acquires Mindset Media, Prepares To Venture Into Direct Response Advertising"
.
TechCrunch
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
Moscaritolo, Angela (June 11, 2012).
"After Google Acquisition, Meebo Shutting Down July 11"
.
PC Magazine
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
Weiss, Todd R. (April 29, 2013).
"Google Discontinuing Meebo Bar Chat, Sharing Services"
.
eWeek
. Retrieved
August 7,
2013
.
- ^
"MSN web messenger"
.
Msnheaven.com
. Retrieved
April 15,
2019
.
- ^
Harris, Scott Duke (July 17, 2008).
"Ambitious Meebo picks up partners: Offers web-based messaging"
.
San Jose Mercury News
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
Popa, Bogdan (September 11, 2007).
"Meebo Gets File Sharing Features. Yahoo Messenger Users Overjoyed!"
.
Softpedia
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
a
b
Muchmore, Michael (August 3, 2010).
"Meebo"
.
PC Magazine
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
Macmanus, Richard (May 15, 2007).
"Meebo Rooms Launched - "like a very very rich widget"
"
.
ReadWrite
. Retrieved
August 7,
2014
.
- ^
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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