« Previous post
Next post »

February 19, 2006

Meebo: More Features, Continued Growth

Nik Cubrilovic

43 comments »

Since launching last year, Meebo the web-based instant messaging application has had phenomenal growth and great user adoption. This week they have announced a new set of features and upgrades to their application, the first since they announced their funding from Sequoia capital.

The best of the new features are that you can now create an account with Meebo and have access to all your instant messaging accounts with a single sign-on. The problem I have had to date with Meebo is that I do have a number of different accounts on different networks but the single sign-on and having a Meebo account solves that. They have added some cool features to it such as being able to sign in with a default status of invisible, see all your contacts across all networks in a single list, and having as many accounts as you wish. Single sign-off is coming shortly I am told.

I was at a dinner with Meebo co-founder Seth Sternberg during the week and he talked about these new features, the continuing growth as well as Meebo’s plans for the future. These guys are working on some exciting things and are now handling their large load of users well with more servers. Their growth is still extremely strong: they hit a new record of 396,000 connections in a day last week.

I am using Meebo as my full-time instant messaging client from today – and it is working well so far. Many of the incremental improvements have made the experience enjoyable for the user. It will be interesting to see how the competition responds to what Meebo are doing and if they will be able to sustain this growth over the next few months and beyond.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 19th, 2006 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Web 2.0 News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Netweb » School Traffic via Techcrunch and Meebo

    February 19th, 2006 at 7:39 pm

  2. Marcus Troiano » Meebo: More Features, Continued Growth

    February 19th, 2006 at 8:37 pm

  3. folkmann.ca

    February 20th, 2006 at 1:10 am

  4. Information Narcosis

    February 20th, 2006 at 6:02 am

  5. meebo v2 at quintal do xanato

    February 22nd, 2006 at 4:20 am

  6. Raul Vera » Blog Archive » Meebo incorpora nuevas funcionalidades

    April 8th, 2006 at 2:09 pm

  7. TechCrunch » News Bits: Skype, Pandora and Meebo

    May 2nd, 2006 at 11:25 pm

  8. Web 2.0 - Что нового? » Blog Archive » Meebo добавляет поддержку хранения логов

    May 4th, 2006 at 2:15 am

  9. TechCrunch » Blog Archive » Friendster Mobs - Web Chat Coming

    May 18th, 2006 at 5:41 am

  10. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Meebo、MeeboMeスタート

    August 2nd, 2006 at 10:44 am

  11. blogpocket 6.0 » MeeboMe, un widget para chatear con el autor de un blog la locura de los weblogs dentro de uno

    August 3rd, 2006 at 3:28 am

  12. Web Infoterkini » Blog Archive » Meebo Web Info

    August 12th, 2006 at 4:02 pm

  13. webpodge

    September 14th, 2006 at 2:40 pm

  14. Meebo добавляет поддержку хранения логов | TechCrunch по-русски

    February 7th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Srinivasan

    February 19th, 2006 at 6:52 pm

    Meebo is an example of a peculiar maketing problem.

    1. If they dont become popular, they are dead.

    2. If they become popular, they are dead as well - all firewalls will start blocking the site.

    The noproxy guys fall under the same category. think - anonymizer, safesurf, noproxy etc.

    Does anyone know if there is a term to describe this?

  2. Frank Gruber

    February 19th, 2006 at 7:14 pm

    Nice post Nik. Meebo seems like a hip and down to earth company. I dig the ‘about’ page off of the Meebo homepage…biz guy, ajax girl, etc…good stuff!

  3. Matt

    February 19th, 2006 at 7:23 pm

    I’m still curious how they plan to turn this into an actual business, and how they plan to deal with the non-existent barrier to entry in their space. I wish them the best of luck!

  4. Handy

    February 19th, 2006 at 7:28 pm

    I’m with Matt - I love the service and use it very frequently (in fact, it saved my bacon recently when I was at the data center…) but I’d really like to know where the profitability comes in!

    I also wish ‘em all the best, it is truly great stuff.

  5. Tyler Kovacs

    February 19th, 2006 at 10:41 pm

    Nice first post Nik. I’ve discovered that it’s even better when I read it to myself with an Australian accent.

  6. Cadence

    February 19th, 2006 at 10:59 pm

    Throw another shrimp on the barbie mate!!!

  7. Nik Cubrilovic

    February 19th, 2006 at 11:13 pm

    funny tyler. . ok ok ill get into it

    “these jaguars are right nasty!”

    someone find that video, I crack up thinking about it.

  8. Nik Cubrilovic

    February 20th, 2006 at 1:38 am

    Srinivasan it’s called having dependancies. All businesses should look closely at who they are dependant on for survival and what they can do to either remove those dependancies or minimise any risk arising from them. It’s the T in a SWOT

  9. ThePef

    February 20th, 2006 at 3:43 am

    Don’t count Meebo out just because it is popular. I had the good opportunity to sit down with Seth last week, and I am behind his current business plan. The technical ways in which Meebo is handling IM also places its use in a position of adoption within the enterprise, or other institution. IM protocols require unusual support within an enterprise, and by moving it to http many of these inherent problems go away.

  10. SurveyValley.com

    February 20th, 2006 at 5:52 am

    You are right. My company’s proxy is blocking MeeBo now. Anyway, I still support MeeBo.

  11. Matt Smith

    February 20th, 2006 at 10:03 am

    They have an interesting approach to recruiting people. They are hiring if you know where to look!

    – Matt Smith –
    MyHomePoint - Powering the Modern Family
    SwoofWare - It’s only work if somebody makes you do it

  12. Lance

    February 20th, 2006 at 10:35 am

    Nice first post Nik. Meebo is a nice app. Personally don’t use it much as I find that Adium serves my needs well.

    I wish them the best but like a few others do not understand their business model. Any insights that you can share?

  13. ThePef

    February 20th, 2006 at 7:15 pm

    Lance, the user count is large and growing at Meebo, 350k logins a day, and over 20k concurrent users. That is a large enough market to tap into, and it is growing at a good pace. Think that through and you will have your business model.

  14. Oren

    February 20th, 2006 at 11:40 pm

    Can someone explain to me how Meebo is different to E-messenger.net?

    Thnx.

  15. Mike Rundle

    February 21st, 2006 at 3:02 am

    Matt - the barrier to entry isn’t trivial by any means. Interoperating with the major IM services (since they update their connection protocols often and like to lock-out 3rd parties) is a major pain, so these guys deserve all the credit they’re given.

  16. mt

    February 23rd, 2006 at 6:08 pm

    Meebo is implemented on the Gaim protocol. Anyone can make their own meebo website in 1 week.

    The main problem with Meebo’s business model is that they are highly vulnerable to being closed off by the big networks at ANY time.

  17. Jonathan

    March 6th, 2006 at 4:31 pm

    Yea my school also blocked meebo…do you guys know how to still get on it? it would really save me from some of my tourturing classes

  18. jennie

    March 9th, 2006 at 5:13 pm

    Try http://www.e-messenger.us or
    http://www.meebo.us or
    http://www.meebo.biz

    They all point to Meebo site..

  19. clare

    March 28th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

    hey, i’ve tried pretty much every single alternate address but the school filter still won’t let me in to meebo. are there any addresses i can use? i’ve used the www2.meebo.com (etc), 294.329.2820 (etc), meebo.us, meebo.biz etc.
    tried them all and none of them work. my school is fucked up!

  20. skewetoo

    March 28th, 2006 at 10:50 pm

    “Can someone explain to me how Meebo is different to E-messenger.net?”

    To start, no advertisments (yet)…

  21. doby

    April 18th, 2006 at 7:01 pm

    If nothing works try this:

    http://www.scipo.com
    http://www.scipo.net
    http://www.scipo.us
    http://www.scipo.co.uk
    http://www.scipo.org
    http://www.scipo.info

    They all go to meebo .

  22. reads

    May 24th, 2006 at 7:25 am

    http://solutionwatch.com/225/m.....mment-6585

  23. duke

    September 10th, 2006 at 5:49 am

    Lots of people ask my oppinion about who is the best in instant messaging.
    Here’s my 2 cents:

    1. http://www.meebo.com ( alternatives- http://www.meebo.us” or http://www.meebo.biz )

    2. http://www.imunitive.com (alternatives- http://www.imunitive.co.uk )

    3. http://www.imhaha.com - supports QQ as a bonus-( alternatives- http://www.imhaha.net)

    4. http://www.e-buddy.com (alternatives -http://www.e-buddy.us)

    5. http://www.koolim.com (strong newcomer) -(alternatives-http://www.koolim.us)

    6. http://www.goowy.com - ( alternatives-http://www.goowy.us , http://www.goowy.info , http://www.goowy.biz)
    7. http://www.mabber.com ( alternatives-http://www.mabber.us )

    8. http://www.wablet.com ( really strong competitor for the first places-still in Alpha- ) - ( alternatives- http://www.wablet.us )

  24. Nick

    October 4th, 2006 at 2:45 pm

    Chatango.com is another service to add chat to your home page.

  25. josciel

    October 20th, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    ola

  26. saqiba

    October 31st, 2006 at 9:34 am

    still i cant use the meebo i tried all da sides but still ghhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

  27. Jeff

    November 20th, 2006 at 2:23 am

    “still i cant use the meebo i tried all da sides but still ghhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”

    Try this then….

    http://www.ebuddy.com

    Works fine for me :)

  28. abbas

    November 20th, 2006 at 11:47 pm

    chat

  29. Jamie

    January 4th, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    I cant access Meebo from work.. they keep blocking all the ip addresses. Can anyone help?

« Previous post
Next post »