« Previous post
Next post »

August 2, 2006

Meebo Launches MeeboMe

Michael Arrington

96 comments »

Palo Alto based Meebo is a Sequoia backed web chat company that allows users to access popular instant messaging services on a web page instead of using downloaded software. Our posts on Meebo are here - we’ve covered this company closely since its launch in September 2005.

Until February, every time a user visited Meebo they were required to re-enter their IM login credentials to access Yahoo, MSN, etc. Now, however, users may (but aren’t required to) create a Meebo account that stores these credentials, allowing for a single sign in to multiple IM services. This user registration feature is a key part to a new service they are launching today, called MeeboMe.

MeeboMe is a Flash-based chat widget that Meebo users can place on a website. This is not a group chat feature that companies like 3bubbles have launched in the recent past (and which are plagued by scaling issues). MeeboMe is a one-on-one communication between a website owner and a visitor.

If the widget is placed on the site (see embedded widget below), every current visitor on the site shows up as a contact on the website publisher’s meebo contact list. If the visitor chooses to email the publisher, that message pops up on the publisher’s screen, and a chat session can occur. Note that this is a two way mechanism - even if a visitor has not initiated chat, the publisher can ping the user anyway to initiate a conversation (this would freak me out if I was just visiting a site, but perhaps it will be a common thing in the future).


Visitors are assigned a username but can choose a session alias. In the future users will be able to log in with their Meebo credentials, establishing who they are with certainty. Even for small sites (and maybe mostly for small sites) this will provide a useful communication mechanism unavailable today. Note that group chat will also be enabled in the future, allowing larger conversations to take place.

Because every current visitor is marked as a chat contact, MeeboMe also acts as a great way to tell a site owner exactly how many visitors are on his or her site at any given time - they all show up as contacts.

This is the first time Meebo is directing messaging traffic direclty between users without flowing it through one of the IM networks. They’ve therefore just crossed the line and have become an IM network on their own. They’re using the Jabber platform for this - meaning you can add your Meebo account to a Jabber client and access this service without actually going to Meebo.com. For now, Meebo has restricted users from chatting with other Meebo users through Jabber clients, but removing this restriction would be trivial.

Which begs the question - has Meebo just leveraged the existing IM applications like Yahoo and MSN to build their own powerful IM service that completely bypasses those entrenched brands? How long before loyal Meebo users are simply IMing eachother directly through Meebo’s Jabber service?

As an aside, I had a chance to talk to Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg about the recent Yahoo acquisition rumors, which he flatly denied. What isn’t deniable is that Yahoo is paying users to test out the Meebo service. I have more info from Yahoo regarding this, but have been asked not to post on it yet.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 4:00 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. 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. otro blog más » meebo me!, mensajería instantánea en tu web

    August 2nd, 2006 at 4:18 am

  2. world according to ack ~ adam karas » Meebo Widgets

    August 2nd, 2006 at 5:00 am

  3. Bistec » meebo

    August 2nd, 2006 at 5:35 am

  4. Meebo voedt ook het MySpace beest · BlueAce

    August 2nd, 2006 at 5:45 am

  5. Digital Meadows » Blog Archive » Un nuovo livello di interazione

    August 2nd, 2006 at 6:03 am

  6. Web Things, by Mark Baker » Blog Archive » Meebo Me

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:58 am

  7. Dead2.0 » Meebo adds feature, not revenue model

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:05 am

  8. Trying out MeeboMe at Aral Balkan

    August 2nd, 2006 at 9:39 am

  9. Again? » Blog Archive » Meebo Launches MeeboMe

    August 2nd, 2006 at 10:36 am

  10. nonsmokingarea.com » Blog Archive » meeboMe: personal IM-widget

    August 2nd, 2006 at 2:52 pm

  11. » Meebo Launches MeeboMe - Haiku Headlines | Headlines of Today. In 17 syllables. What more do you need?

    August 2nd, 2006 at 3:09 pm

  12. unitstep.net

    August 2nd, 2006 at 3:20 pm

  13. Meebo Me at Technology News

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:57 pm

  14. Web2.0Fan.net

    August 3rd, 2006 at 5:45 am

  15. EveryDigg » Blog Archive » Meebo Launches MeeboMe

    August 3rd, 2006 at 11:03 am

  16. Mr. 6 - 趨勢．創投．軟體．策進 » Blog Archive » 社交 2.0，è¯è£”創業家大點å

    August 3rd, 2006 at 4:53 pm

  17. Kyoga@blog

    August 4th, 2006 at 8:01 am

  18. Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Meebo to face more competition from stealth startup Wablet

    August 4th, 2006 at 3:10 pm

  19. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Meeboã«å¼·æ•µç¾ã‚‹ï¼Ÿç§˜å¯†ã®ã‚¹ã‚¿ãƒ¼ãƒˆã‚¢ãƒƒãƒ—Wablet

    August 4th, 2006 at 6:31 pm

  20. TechCrunch en français » Meebo devra affronter un nouveau concurrent: Wablet

    August 6th, 2006 at 12:42 am

  21. Blog by Kveton » Blog Archive » Innovation in the marketplace

    August 9th, 2006 at 10:11 am

  22. Blog of Sajuuk » Blog Archive » Meebo Launches MeeboMe

    August 9th, 2006 at 9:48 pm

  23. Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Geesee to offer cross-site chat by tag

    September 4th, 2006 at 9:57 am

  24. accelzone - techie weblog » Geesee to offer cross-site chat by tag

    September 4th, 2006 at 9:57 am

  25. probando chorradas « enTRANCE

    September 4th, 2006 at 11:44 am

  26. Geesee Chatting « Ray-Deo

    September 4th, 2006 at 9:14 pm

  27. Tech Industry » Meebo Launches MeeboMe

    September 13th, 2006 at 8:11 pm

  28. webpodge

    September 15th, 2006 at 12:31 am

  29. Real-time tracking with MeeboMe widget « Chimney

    November 12th, 2006 at 6:19 am

  30. Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Wengo Video Chat for Bloggers

    December 21st, 2006 at 9:39 pm

  31. Davide Salerno » WengoVisio: videochat per bloggers

    December 22nd, 2006 at 12:09 am

  32. Multimedias.mobi » Wengo Video Chat for Bloggers

    December 22nd, 2006 at 2:04 am

  33. TechCrunch en français » Wengo offre le chat vidéo aux Bloggers

    December 22nd, 2006 at 11:20 am

  34. Wengo Video Chat for Bloggers

    January 8th, 2007 at 10:16 pm

  35. cefana.com

    March 21st, 2007 at 10:18 am

  36. anime make overs

    May 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 am

  37. Business News Research » FriendFeed Adds Search, And Suddenly Feels Like A Destination Site

    March 18th, 2008 at 6:40 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Emehrkay

    August 2nd, 2006 at 4:17 am

    Great idea. I wonder how they’ll start to make money, any ideas?

  2. steve_ray

    August 2nd, 2006 at 4:32 am

    I think that this new feature shows us a bit more about the direction of meebo. From what it seems, they’re building a universally accessible, software-free, presence-aware, communication tool -> much more than an ajax IM tool… looking like sequoia made a good bet.

    I’d say there are quite a few possible revenue models there. Cool stuff meebo. Looking forward to a mobile element. They should go after a “MEEBO” (63326) sms shortcode - it’s still available… knock knock.

  3. Tim

    August 2nd, 2006 at 4:32 am

    Couldn’t you use this for the “Click Here for Live Support” feature that many sites have? These services are sometimes expensive so this would be great for that use.

  4. Jeremy

    August 2nd, 2006 at 4:41 am

    This isn’t new technology at all. I’ve worked for companies which have used this kind of thing within the last 3 years.

    Only issue is the privacy of such, and that it does freak out users. But yeah, very dated. It’d be cool if it was in Ajax instead of flash.

  5. Sharpshoot

    August 2nd, 2006 at 4:47 am

    See Chatango.com which was one of the companies to come out of Max Levchin’s MRL ventures incubator. identical stuff.

  6. Mik Koon

    August 2nd, 2006 at 4:57 am

    Seems just like chatango … I like meebo’s chat window a bit better but they also need a “message catcher” so that we know when people are tying to start a chat without having to have the meebo browser window open!!!

    A nice enhancement would be to allow people on the site to chat with each other too, and not just the website owner who embeds the chat widget.

  7. Daniel

    August 2nd, 2006 at 5:30 am

    Chatango looks interesting, but the client is only windows. The odds of them using a neutral /interoperable protocol give that fact is just about nil.

    This looks like it could be competition to the Live Support clones as Tim mentions, and I intend to use it for exactly that on my next project.

  8. Oskar Austegard

    August 2nd, 2006 at 6:37 am

    While meebo is great for when you’re not on your own computer, it’s not a good substitute for a desktop client. It’s just too easy to accidentally close the browser, navigate away from the page, etc. etc.

    What’s really needed is a wrapper around a browser that would “desktopify” a web app…

  9. immorak

    August 2nd, 2006 at 6:49 am

    I’ve tried it out and i think its great!

    I agree with some of the other comments about having a program for the desktop to use meebo on. It’s somethign they should really look into.

    I don’t see any ad’s on their site so how does meebo make money from any of this?

  10. Gbd

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:01 am

    You should all Give Bob a Dollar, he lost his job

    http://www.givebobadollar.com/

  11. Peter

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:02 am

    This looks fairly neat - I’m a big fan of Meebo (the addition of accounts saved me a lot of time), but as others have said, this is not a new idea. I also agree that it would freak me out if a publisher/website owner IM’d me before I messaged them. Perhaps they should change this so that the visitor must initiate a conversation - but their presence can still be seen by the website owner. Otherwise, it might scare some people off.

    It’d also be cool to chat with other current visitors to the site. Though, there’s a neat online app that already does this - Gabbly:
    http://home.gabbly.com/

    It can be used with virtually any site, and it’s pretty nifty.

  12. Meebo_usr

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:08 am

    I don’t know about most people, but its more of a habit for me to use a desktop client than a necessity as compared to a web app. Plus if I am IMing somebody, I most likely have my browser open also. So it is not hard to have another tab open.

    RE: Oskar “It’s just too easy to accidentally close the browser,” - They have a confirmation pop up that asks if you really want to leave the page. How hard is that?

    Needless to say, I think Meebo is making great strides in whatever they roll out.

  13. Daniel

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:19 am

    If you’re looking for something to “desktopify” it, then check out Bubbles.
    http://www.3d3r.com/bubbles/

  14. Justin

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:21 am

    I think services like this will take off, as more and more companies block IM services (and yes this is happening in larger companies)

    Having the ability to use a web client is almost the only option for us cube monkies :)

  15. Craig Cameron

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:41 am

    I love meebo and using a tab in firefox works well because I see anytime someone is instant messaging me. I do agree with Tim about using this as support. It’s a quick and FREE way to do that.

  16. evan

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:47 am

    Works on social networks as well - i’ve been playing with this widget all morning, and looks like meebo is really onto something. Very cool stuff.

  17. EP

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:53 am

    Talk about great use of their technology. I am sure many small websites would pay a small monthly fee to use this as a support tool.

  18. Daniel CerVentus

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:01 am

    EP that is good.

    Anyone knows what the business model of Meebo. I recon it might just be built to be sold.

    and I will perdict again, to Yahoo.

  19. Colby Blaisdell

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:13 am

    Meebo is really on a roll. It would be interesting to see what percentage of the big IM networks’ users are logging on through meebo.

    Michael you mentioned that you can log on to Meebo’s Jabber service with an external client, can you share with us how to do that? Having scoured the web this morning for that info it seems there are many of us trying to figure it out.

  20. Ashish

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:14 am

    So, where is the business model?

  21. cuneyt

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:16 am

    You’d be surprised how many company’s are paying for this type of service, so a free variant is no small deal. What would be more compelling is to have an integrated view into the clickstream and pattern analysis of the visitors, in order to be able to have support / sales staff be notified or proactively reach out to assist visitors. LivePerson (http://www.liveperson.com) does this well, but at a price point.

  22. dave

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:36 am

    very cool, now when is the mobile client coming? jabber’s is way too clunky right now and not suitable for most mobile users…

    plus, i checked out the site and it looks like abe lincoln is on the management team! total bonus, i’m now a fan…

  23. Alex Moffat

    August 2nd, 2006 at 10:06 am

    My first thought was to embed this in my Myspace profile. It works.

    My next thought was to embed this into my friends’ profiles, via comments. That also works.

    With great power comes great responsibility… or something.

  24. Christian

    August 2nd, 2006 at 10:11 am

    I agree with #11. Gabbly is great. If Meebo could be like that, wow.

  25. Ashish Sinha

    August 2nd, 2006 at 10:24 am

    I must say meebo has been one of the products that I use very frequently (esp. when I am travelling, and kiosks at the airport are my only way to communicate)…But meebome, though it looks like a great product; seems more like livechat/boldchat..
    and the 2-way communcation might really get irritating!
    My review on meeboMe here

    What will differentiate Meebo from others will be its simplicity and easy access..

  26. Miguel Paraz

    August 2nd, 2006 at 10:35 am

    How about: MeeboMe on the website, and any XMPP client - and not just the Meebo website - on the website owner’s desktop?

    With presence awareness, the widget can see the XMPP client’s status. The MeeboMe page just says “is online,” but that should be upgradeable to “Busy,” “Talk to me about our latest products,” and so on.

  27. Prateek Mathur

    August 2nd, 2006 at 11:02 am

    Is sequoia scalable that Meebo folks decided to use it?

  28. *e

    August 2nd, 2006 at 11:09 am

    go meebo!!

  29. andy

    August 2nd, 2006 at 11:32 am

    Meebo is how with the college/school crowd, since you can sit at any comp and be chatting, and you won’t have to install any kind of programs onto the desktop (and installing is banned sometimes).

    The Meebome product is really cool, as some of the posters about have said, now you can put it into your MySpace profile or other sites and it’ll be instant messaging with visitors instead of having to send messages through the Myspace system. I wouldn’t be surprised if Myspace banned them, like they did with YouTube….

  30. Michael Flessas

    August 2nd, 2006 at 12:08 pm

    MeeboMe? Sounds good.

    With all good wishes,

    Michael Flessas
    Blog: http://michaelflessas.blogspot.com

  31. engtech

    August 2nd, 2006 at 12:46 pm

    wordpress.com has added a widget so all wordpress.com blogs will support this feature.

    http://wordpress.com/blog/2006.....-meebo-me/

    This is A+ cool, but I could see blogs completely devolving as the author spends all the time on IM.

    engtech
    http://engtech.wordpress.com

  32. Jack Chawla

    August 2nd, 2006 at 1:07 pm

    This will work for sites that have only one employee that handles web-site visitors. If you have more then one employee handling visitors, you need queuing and routing to route requests to appropriate employees. In addiiton to that, you need reporting, monitoring, etc.

  33. Jeff Smith

    August 2nd, 2006 at 1:40 pm

    http://www.imhaha.com is a strong competitor of meebo.

    It has more functions than meebo. For example, you can hold conference among your buddies on the different messenger systems. My yahoo friend and my msn friend can talk together. One more thing I like most is that it uses https, all my messages are encrypted, so the network guy could not check my chat.

  34. nick

    August 2nd, 2006 at 2:01 pm

    I have CHATSTAT installed on a 128 MB USB card, plug and go, WITH 9 IMs, web Stats, VOIP management, and an instant mesenger interface.

    Check it out.

    http://www.chatstat.com

  35. Avatar

    August 2nd, 2006 at 3:47 pm

    About Chatango, i just posted on it.

    http://bloggeratto.blogspot.co.....-blog.html

  36. Search Engine WEB

    August 2nd, 2006 at 3:56 pm

    http://gabbly.com/http://techcrunch.com/

    Try this One - Really Cool

  37. Miguel Paraz

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:51 pm

    This would be even more compelling if the website owner can access the chat from his mobile.

  38. jian

    August 2nd, 2006 at 7:59 pm

    Miguel, you can change your presence inside meebo and even do a custom away message like “Talk to us about our latest products” by using the away menu near the top of the buddy list (it’s defaulted to “I’m available” when you log on).

    This is kind of a fun way to broadcast “messages” to all of your visitors in realtime. Try it out and let us know if this helps.

    and yes abe lincoln is totally cool to work with :)

  39. Peter

    August 2nd, 2006 at 8:18 pm

    Since People Aggregator is doing all the ‘universal login’ and ’structured blogging’ and other stuff, I wonder what they’re planning on supporting in the chat/IM world - if anything.

    That said, Marc Canter said he plans on providing the government all of your data as soon as the government asks for it. Take that for what you will. I take him at his word.

  40. Ajay D'Souza

    August 2nd, 2006 at 9:54 pm

    I have created a WordPress Plugin that will allow you to easily integrate meebo me anywhere in your blog template.

    More information and download

  41. Emehrkay

    August 3rd, 2006 at 4:34 am

    gabbly > *

  42. cindy

    August 3rd, 2006 at 1:42 pm

    With WordPress, adding MeeboMe is a breez. Very cool feature indeed.

  43. Mike Abundo

    August 4th, 2006 at 3:52 am

    I’m adopting the Meebo widget, but I’m watching the development of the completely-made-in-the-Philippines Wablet. I expect the latter to blow the former away.

  44. Tom Parker

    August 4th, 2006 at 2:37 pm

    An external program would be nice too it would save time having a web browser open all the time too

  45. Richie

    August 4th, 2006 at 8:30 pm

    very cool feature ,thanks,meebo team

  46. Vince

    August 6th, 2006 at 3:29 am

    An other site to use a securised chat on a website:
    http://www.chatsys.com
    Visitors can chat with other visitors.
    I’m the creator and I’m not in a galaxy far far away: you can contact me, I’ll reply asap!

  47. Miles

    August 8th, 2006 at 10:23 am

    Hey where’s my commission check? Very cool indeed.

    http://forum.meebo.com/viewtopic.php?t=3559

  48. Dirvon

    August 11th, 2006 at 6:03 am

    i like koolim better for now, better window management.

  49. Dan

    September 1st, 2006 at 2:13 am

    I read a comment about mobile messaging. eBuddy has a mobile service. I was suprised it works great!
    With an xHTML or WAP enabled browser on your phone or PDA you can log in (free). It is available for MSN, Yahoo and AOL. There are different versions: http://www.ebuddy.com/mobile.php

  50. Jack

    September 9th, 2006 at 12:41 pm

    Dan sounds like he works for ebuddy, what does this post have to do with mobile IM?

  51. Mike

    October 3rd, 2006 at 9:42 am

    i like it here, nice, meebo is blocked, check out http://www.koolim.com

  52. Mike

    October 3rd, 2006 at 9:42 am

    its nice.

  53. Rob

    October 10th, 2006 at 4:07 am

    koolim.com does not compare against meebo. i think koolim is just no good. i also hate these “i like koolim.com” and “check out koolim.com” comments, it’s just embarassing for them to be advertising their product this way.

  54. Allen

    October 15th, 2006 at 4:24 pm

    FYI, I just completed an interview with Seth from Meebo:
    http://www.centernetworks.com/interview-with-meebo

  55. Steve Tateossian

    October 18th, 2006 at 10:59 am

    Does anyone know whether it has the back-end functionalities of software such as LiveChat? As in tracking a visitor, recording IM conversations, canned responses, etc. Can Meebo support sales and lead generation efforts, or is it just some cute way of communicating with your visitors?

  56. Mike

    October 30th, 2006 at 6:59 pm

    Check out http://www.koolim.com

    Its a great web based messenger.

    It supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Sametime and others.

    Have a great day.

  57. Gary

    February 10th, 2007 at 4:10 am

    To Tom Parker :
    Check out http://www.plugoo.com

  58. Gary

    February 10th, 2007 at 4:11 am

    To Tom Parker:

    check out http://www.plugoo.com

  59. James Love

    February 28th, 2007 at 9:19 pm

    Meebo thinks all us boomers better get on this quick before we die. Check out http://www.boomerdeathcounter.com where is says one of us kicks every 55 seconds.

« Previous post
Next post »