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October 29, 2007

Meebo Platform Launches With Big San Francisco Party

Michael Arrington

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After speculation from last week, Sequoia backed Meebo launches Meebo Platform this evening, allowing third party developers to create applications for the Meebo web chat service. They’re celebrating the launch with a big party in San Francisco with hundreds of the company’s closest friends.

Like Facebook Platform and the recently announced MySpace Platform it consists of a set of APIs to give developers access certain user features and information. Developers will be able to include Flash applets and Javascript snippets within the applications.

Unlike MySpace and Facebook, however, the platform is not open to all who choose to come. The company is announcing four partners this evening and opening up a sandbox area for developers to build potential applications. Those that Meebo thinks will make the user experience richer, will be permitted to launch.

Meebo Platform will allow developers to monetize their applications, but it’s not open. Meebo will sell ads into the applications directly and split revenue 50/50 with the application developers.

Four partners are being announced this evening along with the launch. All are communication based: Tokbox (video chat), Talkshoe (conference calls on the fly), Ustream (lifecasting) and Pudding Media (PC to PC VOIP calls).

Games and other types of applications will come next. Basically, any type of application that can benefit from having either instant access to friends who are online right then and/or the need to communicate with them via instant messaging, would do well on the platform. With the communications partners, they simply use the friends list and presence indicator to help start a voice or video communication on the third party platform. For gaming and other applications, it may simply embed a game within a chat environment, allowing players to communicate real time with each other.

Meebo will also be hosting an open-door developer day on November 22 in their Silicon Valley offices. Developers can show up, show off their applications, talk to Meebo about potential applications, etc.

We mentioned current Meebo user stats in a post about them last week.

The image below shows the Tokbox application in action.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 8:29 pm 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.

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    October 30th, 2007 at 10:21 am

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Comments

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  1. Stephen Lev

    October 29th, 2007 at 8:37 pm

    Is it me or does this “platform” have zero buzz?

  2. Allen Stern

    October 29th, 2007 at 8:53 pm

    Aah darnit - Seth invited me - maybe next time I can talk Seth into an east coast launch :)

  3. i'm Ronald Lewis

    October 29th, 2007 at 8:59 pm

    Add the word Platform to your business plan for an instant significant valuation.

  4. Allen Stern

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    Ronald #4 - check out the CenterNetworks platform launch - it’s so hot!
    http://www.centernetworks.com/.....nouncement

  5. Ionabigga

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

    looks very cool. I can see video/Tokbox being huge on Meebo

  6. Michael Arrington

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

    Allen - heh. If April 1 was coming up, I’d be launching the TechCrunch Platform (TM).

  7. Allen Stern

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:08 pm

    LOL — I can’t wait for the iPhone Platform! and then of course we should bet on who will come out with “Platform 2.0″ first.

  8. Steve Ballmer

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:26 pm

    I will never again go to a party in San francisco!
    It’s a long story, … my manhood is intact!

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  9. rc

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:29 pm

    nice job!
    but not popular enough service

    rg

    trading tennis blog

  10. not gonna be a big deal

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:36 pm

    sequoia is simply trying to invent its own facebook. accel need not be worried.

  11. Andrew

    October 29th, 2007 at 9:36 pm

    great another buzz word that everyone will now be adding to their business plans

  12. fake and anonymous

    October 29th, 2007 at 10:09 pm

    all it takes is one party invite to get on TC’s front page….

  13. This is news?

    October 29th, 2007 at 10:35 pm

    I usually enjoy most of the content written about on TechCrunch, but this is anything but worthy news.

  14. Jesse Evans

    October 29th, 2007 at 10:39 pm

    I can actually also see the Ustream application being popular also. I can see kids wanting to have all their friends watch them in groups. I can see them also doing shows, concerts, etc through this.

    Good luck Meebo with the new platform!

  15. Joe

    October 29th, 2007 at 10:49 pm

    Does Meebo share said revenues with the IM networks? Am I insane or is Meebo robbing Yahoo/MSN/AOL blind?

  16. crimson

    October 29th, 2007 at 11:40 pm

    Their API doesn’t make sense, seems totally useless.

  17. MeetingFlex.com

    October 30th, 2007 at 12:26 am

    Why does everybody needs to have their own propreitary platform…why cant they just sit together and create

    Indstry Standards ( create a new xml interchange format like ebxml)

    http://www.meetingflex.com
    Social Networking + Video - Crap

  18. Michael

    October 30th, 2007 at 1:30 am

    Tokbox? They are doing the same thing, arent they? Will they give up their technology or what sort of partnership could they have with a competitor?

    –
    http://viibee.com, online dating is fun again

  19. Shafqat

    October 30th, 2007 at 1:57 am

    Meebo or a third party Meebo Platform company shuold consider going into to Enterprise/Corporate online meeting and collaboration space a la Webex. Seems like they have a lot of the tools already in place.

    On a side note, I’m thinking about using the Facebook Platform to build my own platform so that third parties can build unlimited platforms.

    Shafqat

  20. micfo.com

    October 30th, 2007 at 3:22 am

    Embed a game within a chat environment is that really necessary? Better they had added skype there.

  21. Hashim Warren

    October 30th, 2007 at 5:55 am

    “Embed a game within a chat environment is that really necessary?”

    Ha! You just asked if a game is “necessary”

  22. Mayank Kumar

    October 30th, 2007 at 9:22 am

    So many platforms, but at the end a platform can only be as rich as APIs it is able to offer. Lets see who wins out in the end :)

  23. rick

    October 30th, 2007 at 9:29 am

    Wow, I was wondering if someone was going to edge out Friendster for “Most Irrelevant Platform also-ran” Congrats Meebo!!

  24. Ray

    October 30th, 2007 at 9:34 am

    I agree with Joe (15.)

    Can someone please explain (or point to a reference) how Meebo is legal?
    Up until now, meebo was really generating much revenue from using the member of other IM services. If they do start to extract value, won’t the MSN, ICQ, Google, and Yahoo, want to force their users to stay within their own applications?

  25. chrisco

    October 30th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    Is it a sign of desperation or “existing business plan not working” to try to gin up interest by adding throwing a “platform” party and “developer’s day”?

  26. Jose Hernandez

    October 30th, 2007 at 10:25 am

    Well, where’s the party at? Last night? Damn…

  27. PJ

    October 30th, 2007 at 11:35 am

    Some of you should give Meebo more credit, it’s very innovative technology and it works. The Meebo interface, you can drag, resize windows, all inside the browser, potentially this fulfills the dream of true web-based applications that look and feel like the ordinary apps we use now. I’m not sure if Meebo wants to replace MS Windows, but it sure looks like they could, or at least aspects of it.

    I doubt that’s Facebook’s goal and I don’t see much of a comparison here. Facebook has too much to gain addressing the business they already have. Facebook is fat and happy with its big social network, where I think Meebo has entirely different avenues of options, where they can go with this technology.

    Technically I don’t know exactly how it works, but the interface is beautiful, really compelling work. That they can get this featured-rich GUI functioning inside a browser window is a remarkable achievement, show some respect.

  28. PJ

    October 30th, 2007 at 11:50 am

    For example, Meebo could offer some file storage with a file manager application, then incorporate http://FTP. That would be handy for webmasters, it could complement cPanel.

  29. Steve Ballmer

    October 30th, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    The TechCrunchers are francisco types ….

    http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  30. Amit

    October 30th, 2007 at 10:11 pm

    Does anyone know how many Meebo users actually are there?

  31. sumanth

    November 1st, 2007 at 8:26 am

    k

  32. Pamela

    November 7th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

    Why am I not able to view my other party’s video feed in the Video/Audio feed section? I just see a blank screen and does not hear audio even if it says the other party in on audio.

    I tried the set up last week and worked fine except the clarity was a little dark.

    Can someone advice me on how to let this Tokbox Audio/Viedo application work?

    Thanks.

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