Update on our post from earlier today - Meebo is now confirming that they have raised a $25 million third round of financing from Jafco Ventures, Time Warner Investments and KTB Ventures. Previous investors Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson also participated.
Meebo was looking for a buyer through their investment bank, Montgomery & Co., but moved to a fundraising round earlier this month when there were no takers at the price they wanted. The rumored valuation on the financing was $200 million.
Meebo was pitching strategic partners hard to join the round, including eBay, Fox/MySpace and AOL. Time Warner/AOL obviously sees something they like. Last month the two companies started working more closely with the release of Open AIM 2.0.
This round also signals that Meebo will be looking to Asian expansion. Jafco is a Japanese based fund; KTB is Korean.
Great job guys! Meebo is an amazing service and I’m excited for their future. Looking forward to more great things from the Meebo team.
And…. the bubble is back!
bubble is back for sure
oh and interesting that time warner (aol) is investing in this
I am speechless. Yes, the previous post is absolutely correct. The bubble is back. WTF. Web effing IM. Hey Time Warner, I have some other crap to sell you too. Send me an e-mail.
I’m not going to delve into whether “the bubble is back” or not, because I think there are far too many factors involved for one to know for sure quite often; however, I will say that Meebo is a fantastic service and deserves any funding it receives, no matter what company it’s coming from.
Instant messaging is one area that people haven’t really grown into the idea of doing through a web application at this point, but they’re on to something, and you can tell that if you’ve ever used Meebo. It’s very intuitive and has pop-out functions for chat windows, so you don’t feel like you’re using a web application.
This being said, as much as I think the service is very good at what it does, I still use, and will continue to use, Gtalk. I do, however, use Meebo when I’m on a computer that doesn’t have Gtalk. I’m not one to believe everything’s moving online so fast, not with the access issues that still exist throughout the world.
As a side note, it’s strange to me that people would say the bubble is back when an online IM application gets funding, but not when an online document manager or excel-like application gets funding. It seems a bit inconsistent, whether there is another bubble or not. Just a thought.
fgfgfggggg
Meebo is a great application; however, given similar if not better interfaces:
http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/, I dont see the business. However, maybe they have another application in the works.
AOL + Meebo Rooms..when does Userplane disappear?
I don’t get it. Why is Meebo worth that much? The article doesn’t explain much. Seems to be a lot of instant messaging programs out there. Is being web-based really that valuable? Feels frothy to me.
ML
Is it possible for the big guys to just introduce more interoperability if Meebo becomes more competitive. I agree with the above that webmessenger from yahoo is pretty sweet. and then again, i can use yahoo messenger on my phone so maybe i’ll bypass the web app altogether. That said, meebo continues to impress and impress…best of luck. use that runway and take it big.
… And what is the exit strategy now?
Meebo will become even more important when people use web IM on their phone browser, such as the iPhone or Skyfire.
They are in the same category as my company fitnessanywhere Inc, voted among the top 20 best super small company to work for in bay area (Best of bay), go Meebo!
thak you for say