Instant messaging service Meebo announced a new product tonight called community Instant Messaging that will effectively provide “instant messaging in a box” to any site with a community. It will be a federated system, which means users can access friends on other meebo powered social networks, too. DanceJam, Flixster, myYearbook, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group’s AddictingGames, Piczo, SparkArt, Sugar Publishing and Tagged were also announced as launch partners.
The product interface looks surprisingly similar to Facebook Chat, which launched earlier this year. Well, perhaps it isn’t so surprising, since other social networks are scrambling to counter Facebook Chat, but don’t have the resources to build out their own platform quickly. Even MySpace lacks a web chat product, although they are building one for launch later this year.
Like Facebook Chat, users can “pop out” the chat session and keep it live on their desktop even after they leave the site. Community partners can send messages into user chat streams (things like new friend requests and news stream items). That gives a more persistent connection to the user for the partner, another value point to the product.
The business model: Meebo will offer this free and place ads. Revenues are split 50/50 with the partner. For now Meebo is only working with a few partners, but over time they say they will open up the API for everyone and provide the service as a utility on demand.
An exciting development. Hopefully this will leverage open building blocks. Great to see how fast the Social Web ecosystem is coming together.
John shouldn’t you be retired on some island somewhere after the sale of plaxo? quit hanging around here.
lol.
I shall not vest in peace.
Now comes the game of deciding which is the shorter timeframe: going down the path I was on to create my own site chat system, or wait for the open API for this…
…I wonder how/if it ties in to your existing member database.
Hey Mike - feel free to get in touch. Community IM will definitely integrate with existing member bases. I’m danny@meebo.com.
AskMeGo has a similar widget and it’s already available to all. You can get it here: http://www.askmego.com/widget
These guys have installed it on their site: http://www.intoflight.com
If it wasn’t obvious enough, this is further proof how innovative and forward thinking the guys are Facebook are! this mimics fb chat, which makes sense, cauce they set the benchmark.
Amazing!
I’m not sure Facebook “invented” IM chat within a social network / social web context, nor did they pioneer the UI for this module as the article seems to suggest.
IM’s been around.
And btw, MySpace had a chat program, they took it down because it totally bogged down the server load. Not sure if it is back up sporadically or what, because … I don’t really go to MySpace much!
Nice and looks great…
Meebo is awesome! Great idea. I think they are unique and no one is in this space as of now…
Sandy Jen the co-founder is one special person i always admire…
Look at meebo’s hiring guide ( I read a while back )
http://gigaom.com/2008/07/05/m.....nd-talent/
Soon, am sure they will get more funding..
Cheers, Nag
And then what? When does Meebo make money? Why the hell do they need more funding? How about an exit? WTF?
Homerun - excited for the meebo team.
I need this for my site
This Meebo strategy is very similar Userplane.
Except, Userplane launched revshare over a year ago, deeper APIs, and is a top 30 ad network already paying developers and publishers huge payouts.
I like the Meebo product, but am curious to see if they can actually generate revenue for their partners. Monetizing im/chat for social networks is not easy.
(disclaimer: I use to work at Userplane)
I was waiting for this to happen cause I need this module for my upcoming community.
PS: Nice new comments touch
Cool, its logical that meebo follows facebook or rather jump on a new innovation unlike microsoft
oh yeah , very much looking forward to this, Meebo is doing an excellent job on there available services… and this is really a game changer. Don’t make the people come to you to look at your ads.. Bring the ads to where ever the people will be and see.
Meebo is truly useful! I like it and use it often.
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This is great. Actually, it could work as a plugin for FF that shows when your friends are online or maybe, other meebo users that are in that same page, at that same time, and then, you can start a discussion by chat instead of comments.
The only problem is that in this case I mentioned, the discussion would disappear after closing the chat, different from a comment.
MSN create something similar, but it’s not very effective neither customiseable
http://settings.messenger.live.....tings.aspx
Meebo needs to join/sell to Facebook. Facebook is stupid for trying to create YET ANOTHER IM protocol, if they incorporated Meebo and allowed Facebook to be a universal login to access all the IM services, it’d destroy the competition, especially if it was embeddable on content sites and widely available to online communities.
Assuming it was implemented well and allowed for SMS texting (through aim or whatever), they’d slowly take over the instant messaging world.
I should rephrase that as Facebook should BUY Meebo, it’s a fantastic service, and one of the better Web Apps birthed in the web 2.0 bubble. Many will die, Meebo will survive.
Has anyone been able to use this? I can’t find it on meebo or the partner sites. When will this be available to everyone?
I like (and use) meebo a lot, and community chat is a nice feature, but John asks a crucial question in all of this — “how does meebo make money!”
sweet. always a good idea…
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