Meebo Launches Meebo Rooms (oh, and Meebo now has ads)

I am not sure where they are trying to get to. What have they told sequioa and dfj? that they are building chatrooms?

the feature is cool though.

efforts like these remind me of paul graham’s article that talks about how ppl are wasting their time doing trivial stuff instead of solving tough problems in computer science. really, other than the google algo, what problems have we solved?

Pretty cool idea.

Not sure whether they are going to be able to get $12.5 Million back from “lull ads” - particularly with that new Orgoo coming out.

Its good for Kids/Teenagers however I think.

Slap some ads on Meebo.com - then you’d be talking serious revenue

Meebo really needs to step it up! Chat rooms!? What’s new and who cares? I think Orgoo has the same thing but with built in video conferencing (from what I read on Venturebeat)… nothing breathtaking, but at least they are making chat better.

This is not that cool. Meebo is just whipping together stuff that’s already been done. Yahoo’s new online IM has already nullified meebo. It’s only a matter of time until the VC’s stop funding this steaming pile of Web 2.0 crap.

Skype has had this for a long long time, and so have the others. Guess its all the kiddies using Meebo that they are targetting it at.

What I dont get - if they have “featured rooms” they are effectively providing advertising for other sites? So why not just have advertising on the page anyways ?

Its the fking same thing ?

Here’s a link to a podcast with Seth Sternberg. In it, he does talk about the company’s strategy.
http://www.startupstudio.com/m.....007/04/19/

Here’s an interesting link:

Meebo is What’s Wrong With Web 2.0
http://www.uncov.com/2007/4/11.....th-web-2-0

Hey TC readers-

This is Danny from meebo. If you guys want another place to debate, I just put together…

http://www.meebo.com/room/techcrunchchat/

Check it out. We’re happy to answer questions about the release and participate in some healthy debate.

-Danny

Nah, I’d rather use an actual piece of client software that doesn’t bloat my firefox memory footprint.

Congrats to Seth and the rest of the Meebo team! I’ve seen the beta in action for a couple of weeks and it is game-changing. For all the doubters out there think about consolidating all your IM, forum, video conversations into one “room”. Seth and the team really listen to their users and that’s why they will continue to do very well.

This is a bad idea. Yahoo, MSN and AOL see that meebo is luring users into a separate network in these rooms. If Meebo is taking people off their regular network, they’re taking away from their rightful business. Meebo is stealing here. Not cool.

Zaw, how does meebo chat “consolidate all your IM, forum, video conversations into one “room””!? Chat has been around since theold ages. As far as “video conversations”, what are you talking about?… all they do is show clips from youtube.

I think Rooms are a great idea, although not a new one. I remember spending hours in Yahoo! Chat rooms during the mid-90s. It was the most exciting thing to do online in ‘96.

But having videos automatically retrieved and embedded in a chat room is definitely very cool. Kind of like Joost, too.

Just one thing: I’m using Safari on Mac OS 10.4.8 and it doesn’t work too well. Maybe it’s just Safari. I’ve tried out the nightly builds of Webkit (Safari, basically), and web apps and JavaScript and Flash seem to work a lot better.

I can’t use meebo tonight, it causes firefox to crash

Yeah Zaw, why don’t you go pander to your friends at Meebo some more. Meebo is teh ghey.

game changing? please…. sequoia should be worried about their investment. unless they think the world needs more chat room software.

I am already a big Meebo fan. This new chat box feature is simply awesome! What I love is that one can embed it, similar to the IM widget, to any web site.

Bummer that they chose Cnet as a partner, looks like they have the same content every other portal and site out there has

It’s great that they are providing content to their users.

I will stick with Joost though - full screen video with chat functionality. And no YouTube videos!

I find it encouraging that no-one raised even the slightest concern about ads being there; perhaps people are seeing value in sustaining useful companies.

I raise my eyebrow. Ads suck. Use Adblock and the filterset G addon for firefox

at first I wasn’t impressed.. i never even used meebo till tonight..

but one thing i found VERY cool, is I embeded one the chat rooms to a few of my webpages. wow.. all a sudden I see new potential. now that is a very cool feature.

Oops, seems to be down. Can’t wait to try it when it’s back up.

A lot of people here clearly don’t understand the scope of the space Meebo are working in. Very much a “we don’t need another search engine” mentality.

Web-based instant messaging epitomises major benefits of web 2.0 - access your data from anywhere and communicate with anyone instantly.

LOL We launched a stripped down version last friday: mychatlog.com

I would have to say this is one of the best chat tools i’ve ever used.

I love the revenue strategy plan of web 2.0. build a site, get traffic, slap on some advertising. Why don’t these companies get it?? If you want to build a long term business, INCLUDE the revenue plan from the start! And include the advertising from the start!

The ’sign off’ user flow is changed which now displays a page with probably ads and newsletters to subscribe. Looks like this update of meebo is aiming at generating some kind of revenue.

Seeing that our society is build on commerce, it’s nice to the comsumer for once be the main concern, rather than a subthought after the profit.

I used to like meebo.

I’m glad to see Meebo starting to include ads. I think they are a cool company but I get worried they will eventually fade because they can’t really be acquired by the companies that do most of the Web 2.0 acquisitions (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL) which I see as their biggest weakness. Advertising, partnerships, and subscriptions are really their only hope to survive. I am surprised they haven’t experimented with ads before now.

Oh, and to all the haters that knock Meebo’s product, most of you would love to be in their shoes…-Metagg

Looks nice but I think I will stick with http://GeeSee.com for my chatroom.

Big public chats like this suck. Unless you’re a bored teenager or I supposed a pedophile. I just spend 3 minutes in a meebo room, which was all I could take. The “guest1234 entered/left” messages far outnumber any actual messages and what conversation there is is beyond inane.

Seriously - can anyone here say that they would actually spend time using this? Or is meebo just going after the bored kid demographic? Is this really the outcome they wanted?

Hey guys,

Danny from meebo here.

I left this same URL last night, but I’ll be hanging in the TechCrunch room at meebo on and off today for people that want to debate, ask questions, give feedback and report bugs.

http://www.meebo.com/room/techcrunchchat/

Catch ya later,

Danny

cool app just like their IM….very cutesy…..

not sure if its too little too late…..its been a long time since Meebo had a release…..their widget came out about a year ago….

Good idea but nothing new. Information technology started to go low-tech. Can we just reinvent new stuff, something being productive.

Let’s say enabling the parental control on Rated-R HD-DVD Movie. Where in it will auto bleep bad languages from the HD-MOVIE.

Not just grabbing embedded youtube in your chat environment.

Omg this is so retarded!! It keeps on disconnecting and who on earth is gonna wanna use this?

I don’t see the point of having chat rooms.

As for the ads, sooner or later they had to start making some money to impress their investors, but a “lull advertising.” 15-30seconds, is just freakin annoying!

* disappointed user

Metagg - I wouldn’t want to be in Meebo’s shoes when they run out of VC money, which isn’t far off.

If they partner up with http://www.famundo.com, perhaps users will find more value.

Holy shit this looks like a Yahoo chat room with video. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the future of social video / advertising by the Meebo team. Useful communication over video is driven by relevance. Unfortunately this type of chat degrades into a teenage slagging match from its generality. AOL tried these tricks to monetize the IM user pile – I imagine this won’t work either.

What Meebo is doing here is a mediocre attempt to create social interaction and communication around video which will certainly have a bona fide market. The problem is that Meebo has missed the mark and copied the wrong people. I think that many VC backed startups are detrimentally governed by the VC status quo modus operandi i.e. the bewildering need to discover 100x mega-hits from scruffy Stanford Alum. The only online video hit for VCs was the YouTube/ Google deal. YouTube is little more than the Napster of Web 2.0. To state the obvious - Video distribution has and always will be paid for by advertising dollars. The technology crowd has very little experience with the video creation industry.

Here is a break down of one Hollywood segment. There are maybe 20 global advertising agencies that commission approx $6 Billion to less than 20 (mostly Los Angeles based) production companies (in reality there are 180 AICP commercial production firms in the US but the top 20 take about 95% of the revenue). This is the money that advertising agencies pay to make the the commercials / or as we all now like to call ‘video’. This content i.e. TV commercials (as the encompassing term) - is created by hundreds of Producers, Directors, Production Managers ( at Production Companies) and Creative Directors/Art Directors et al (at Advertising Agencies). The current model is to optimizing the relevance of these spots to small segments of audience demographics that hover around the TV networks. The rest of the audience is like “WTF?!” So, the Ad agencies, spend close to $80 billion doing this every year. $80 billion spent every year to marry relevant content with relevant audiences and usually putting irrelevant content in front of the wrong people. As we know this is the floor with the current model. The average commercial costs around $1million and about one month to produce. The average TV commercial requires approximately 120 crew hired by the Production Manager and Producers. There are approx 1000 active PMs and Producers in this $6 billion US production industry. The mean A list TV commercial director (mean: as in ‘average’ not as in ‘asshole’ – although the latter applies to approx 80% of them) (and there are approx 500 of them) generates revenues around $12MM annually. Oh, and don’t think these production companies are limited to commercials and music videos, these folks go on to create and release many of the biggest box office features worldwide produced by these commercial production companies. Just one of these top production companies have the wealth, embedding and power to far exceed all (excluding YouTube) Web 2.0 Internet video startups combined. This is the real industry of ‘video’ this is where all the money is and balance of power probably isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Now consider Meebo’s place in this economy. $12MM is approximately what Meebo has taken in VC. It’s fairly obvious that their advertising strategy is going fail. It’s a glorified banner ad machine.

There is another market out there that’s itching to be grabbed and Meebo has missed it as they fundamentally misunderstand the emerging economy of entertainment over the equally emerging longtail production / audience landscape. This is the economy where Madison Ave intersects with niche content production across the coagulating media enterprises that are beginning to form Blogosphere 2.0. I think many Silicon Valley VCs have placed a little too much emphasis on capturing televisions eyeballs and rose tinted potential of the local Stanfordesque crowd (think 1998…) when they should be exploring the people who really understand the entertainment medium. The Web 1.0 view of Hollywood not knowing a line of code from a line of coke is dangerous thinking for today’s VC. They’re simply missing the opportunity to invest in companies that are actually going to responsible for creating change. This ultimately derives from a gross lack of understanding about the fundamental commodity in question – Filmmaking.

It may be un-sexy and require a few more flights to LAX every month, but that is what it will take for VCs to win in the evolving Internet. Focus on building multiple 10x’s instead of one 100x goliath and you (look at Charles River “Quick Start’ for inspiration if you must) that’s where all the majority of the money has always been in the Hollywood game, and it’s not going to change. Learn the mechanics of the content business – i.e. Hollywood! Learn the complexity behind creativity i.e. production, unions, politics etc. Hollywood producers devote entire careers trying to figure out what it takes to produce material that gets noticed (commercials, music videos, etc) and what material drives a returning audience. This is the essential skill set required to capture a nice chunk of the $80 billion. There’s a massive and lucrative economy here in LA that companies like Meebo are just too far removed to penetrate. Almost all the VCs I’ve met and talk with understand this but chomp at the bit for a logical solution. I think that this is the heart of the problem - VC’dom. Most VCs are scrambling around like bewildered PAs (Production Assistants – generally considered the Hollywood know-nothing) looking under their local rocks for the next media giant. Thankfully, a tiny handful understand the ultimate value of content production and it’s place in the blogosphere, which is why we’re now starting to see an increase in funding in Los Angeles Film/Internet ventures.

As we know the Internet went video last year and we’re at the dawn of a new kind of creative potential. It’s evident to me that the experts in the field of film production will increasingly play a bigger role leading the online video creation/distribution charge. All they’re waiting for is a glimpse of a logical (good business model) economic prize. It will certainly require a more knowledgeable company that Meebo to ignite this new medium/economy – the economy that could ostensibly drive media buys from $80 billion above $100 billion in the next five years. Remember, most of this money wont be going to Google or who ever ends up brokering TV advertising - it goes to networks that create and deliver the entertainment. The Networks usually have most of the control in the material/production too. So, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is the model that will probably continue to succeed. The mechanics behind it just aren’t small and agile enough to change with every current of trend. This is logical.

Summing up: I think film production companies /professionals will end up using their relationships (built over decades) with Advertising Agencies to oversee the creation of the lions-share of popular longtail content, a few crappy ones may succeed but they will be the freaks of nature. There will also be a handful of new media platforms, possibly a widget company, that will win and form the foundation of the blogosphere’s content distribution platform. These platforms will more than likely play the most powerful role in content creation as they will control the brokerage and popularity of content. We will undoubtedly see continued user driven anarchy for a few more years until these new powerbrokers solidify this business.

Existing relationships with Advertising Agencies are the key to success here. It requires years of trust and experience to navigate, penetrate and dominate in the advertising production community. The new market will probably be driven more by filmmakers than coders. Today, if a startup choosing to enter ‘Internet Video’ wants any chance of success, it will probably need to be, in some way, routed in the Hollywood/ Madison Avenue machine, not led by Northern California’s ‘blind’ VCs leading Northern California’s ‘blind’ entrepreneurs into businesses that lack knowledge of the entertainment industry. The best VCs in this game are already forging relationships with Hollywood. I think the logical advertising model of today i.e. slapping ads all over content is probably the wrong approach for the evolving people-oriented-Internet.

Enjoyable entertainment is usually advertising something….

A huge deviation for Meebo…

Meebo has this huge user base only because it solved a unique need for these users in a very simple, easy and efficient way. Now they seem to have been distracted from their main value proposition and are attempting half baked ventures in uncharted territories (for the team).

Is it an admission of failure from the Meebo folks that they cannot monetize their user base in the way they currently use Meebo so that they had to go for other ways to generate revenues? If that’s true, then it’s very sad for a startup with heavy venture funding, loyal the user base and a supposedly great team!

Wow… from what i’ve read and heard - alot of disappointed people + users!

Its hard to imagine that a company like Meebo, with a good rep. has managed to turn the tables on themselves.

Its not like the community was shouting for this… they did this to themselves.

Was there really no other way to monetize the (loyal) users??

I don’t get all this negative reaction. Looks like a very cool feature, and as long as people keep chatting, and looking at videos, and looking at ads, all is gonna be good for meebo.

–
We Will Create Your Very Own Domain Name - http://PowerNamer.com

repetitive strain injury #38, just about hit it on the nail…It’s called Progress..Sign of the Times…

However in the meantime ….Where of where is YAHOO Chat gone!.Yahoo in Silicon Valley is neglecting its chat rooms. Is it Yahoo’s intention to just let it die out?
Like we said before many times..most would be willing to pay a small fee to use Yahoo Chat…Many of the chatters are Seniors to old to now to get out and run around every night, Disabled shut-ins and people from all walks of life that feel like making new friends from all over the world.