A Site You Can’t Live Without
Some ideas take a while to grasp. Some make sense right away. Some might make sense but go nowhere. Others don’t seem to make sense right away but end up clicking at some point later. Some ideas become financial successes, and more than some don’t. I think back to the early days of MySpace, I didn’t use it, and I didn’t really get it. Instead, I had used its predecessor, Friendster, for a brief period of time, but outside of it being different and the buzz, I didn’t understand its value. For someone that works in the Internet space, it took me longer than I’d like to admit and some help from others before I understood the power of what MySpace tapped and the platform it created. Profile based communication doesn’t say "no brainer " or "only a matter of time" the same way that a photo sharing service or video sharing service does. I might be saying the same thing about Twitter when someone buys it for gobs of money, even though on my first glance, "A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?" doesn’t seem to fill an obvious need. This week’s focus, Meebo, lacks the personal celebrity of YouTube or Twitter, but it hits a home run when it comes to no-brainer. Meebo is an online site that combines all of your instant messaging clients into one clean list, and automatically signs you in to all of them when you open the service.
I can see the initial team behind Meebo sitting in a room somewhere. Perhaps they got together at a bar or spent time chatting during smoke breaks. I’d certainly bet that some of them most likely used Trillian or another application that merged all of the disparate clients, and that at some point, they said, "How come no web-based version of Trillian exists?" Like many ideas, including that behind YouTube, others no doubt thought of it first. Like YouTube, though, it came down not to technology but timing. No one had done it yet. With Meebo, I would bet that one of the founders kept up with the newer trends in web technology and realized that they could now create such a site, and they set about doing it. I can only imagine the rush to get to market knowing that they didn’t posses an idea or technology that someone else could be working on that second. But, they did, and like many of the ideas that make sense, execution ultimately sets Meebo apart and has kept them growing and taking on the leadership role.
The site and service embody everything Web 2.0. It relies heavily on Ajax and turns the web into an application that requires only a browser and Internet connection. The company has a clean site, plenty of personality, and until about a day ago no revenue model but plenty of funding from two of the biggest names – Sequoia Capital (first round) and Draper Fisher Investments (second round). I started using the service in late 2005, after reading an article about them in the Wall Street Journal. You wouldn’t normally think to look to the Journal as a source for new sites. In this case, I think they even beat the venerable Tech Crunch. Had they not approached it from a different angle, I probably would have done what I did with Friendster and MySpace, go "oh neat" but not use it. I used Trillian , had it loaded on my work machine and at home. It ran well, logged if I needed. I had no complaints. As the Journal article points out though, some people, don’t have that luxury, such as those in the military stationed overseas. If they want to chat, they had limited options; that is, until Meebo. If you have ever tried AIM express you know what I mean. Meebo no only runs across multiple clients, but it provides an identical experience to what you have now if you use a downloaded application. You can drag windows, resize windows, have multiple chats, minimize, you name it.
Meebo has continued to improve, making upgrades, garnering press, expanding their reach with widgets, and virally growing their user base for the past 18 months. As a user for 16 of those months and one that has evangelized the service, the big news I thought had to do with their decision to try and make money. They did this the same day they announced their latest feature, Rooms. LikeMySpace, I was about to overlook the feature that will no doubt change messaging, but if promoted / adopted properly, could transform Meebo from a cool, useful service, to a multi-hundred million dollar acquisition candidate. As they describe it, "meebo rooms is a neat new product that allows you to connect to other meebo users, friends, and visitors to websites. Think of them as chatrooms, on steroids!…Unlike traditional chatrooms however, we’ve built in a feature that enables you to create a room, add it to you buddylist (to receive notifications even when you’re not in the room), and here’s the kicker… embed the same room on your personal profiles and websites, just like meebo me!" They add, "We know that lots of you love watching YouTube, MetaCafe, and browsing through Flickr. We’ve incorporated the ability to watch your favorite URLs with your friends, all at once! Got a great link that you found on Digg? Paste it in your room and voila, it’s now shared."
We live in a collaborative, conversational, embedded culture. Help facilitate that, and your company has value – just ask Photobucket, who MySpace picked up for upwards of $300 million. Or ask Userplane, a B2B instant messaging company (they made a product for consumer sites to offer IM to their visitors) that AOL bought for $40 million. No doubt about it, Meebo rooms is huge. It’s immediate, voyeuristic, and portable. It has the time tested hangout appeal that the original AOL chatrooms did, but with the transparency that Flickr ushered in with their website widget. It provides a platform for both people and also brands. In the end it’s hard to say what it will become, because people will end up running with it. Meebo won’t make any money with Aptimus (who they show upon sign-out). That placement feels like a deal born out of someone’s relationship not monetary sense. Their inclusion of video ads in the chat room could stick, but ultimately, they should follow the model that Eurekster has followed, owning publisher inventory by creating a service that makes their site better. Check it out, and then just imagine too, millions of people’s profiles on MySpace with their own chat and groups of friends sharing a single chat room but across all of their sites.
Have fun – play with our room below. Enter a YouTube, and a site link to experience some of what makes it unique.
