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Google buys Meebo

blog.meebo.com

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Re: Google buys Meebo

#61

Post by hack_edu »

jpeterson wrote: post #34
starpilot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads who demonstrated their talent in developing a product and a launching company. It'd be a safe way to hire a few competent engineers, and I doubt the acquisition price contains much goodwill.

The talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads... Can we please get over this dopey fixation on big-name elite schools?

Unfortunately tons of firms put a huge value in this. Try getting a high level rockstar-ninja-badass (lol) engineer job, especially at a bay area startup, without some sort of pedigree from a named institution. Its bullshit, but reality.

Google used to, might still, place a degree from a top-tier institution as the first requirement in upper level job postings.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#62

Post by Steko »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #54
mibbitier wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People said this about Wave as well. I'm not convinced. I tried google+, I was really impressed with the UI. I used it for a few days, then a few weeks later I suddenly remembered it existed. I don't think I'm alone. Presumably they still count me as a 'user', even though I haven't used Google+ for ages.

Why do you care if they include you in their user count? Why does it bother you? I love Google+. I love the UI. I love the interaction I have with the people I follow. They post good content, it's well featured, it's fast on mobile (which is something its competitors flatly can not claim) and the Circles model works really well. For me. Funny, I also got a shockingly huge amount of value out of Wave. It was for very…

"I guess I reject the notion that since you don't like/use it, no one does."

No one's really said that. People say no one uses G+ because, relatively speaking, almost no one uses G+. It may be awesome, it may be the greatest thing since sliced bread and in fact almost every review of the UI has lauded it from what I've seen but the flip side of this is tools without community are useless. Whether G+ is dying/dead/a ghost town is a real discussion that can take place.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#63

Post by jpeterson »

Cyranix wrote: post #39
jpeterson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads... Can we please get over this dopey fixation on big-name elite schools?

So... the fact that Google also has some Stanford background doesn't seem pertinent to you? What an unusual knee-jerk reaction.

Yes, it is pertinent. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a really dumb way to evaluate the "talent" of a person or company.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#64

Post by taylorbuley »

I liked how they phrased the news in the body of the post -- "Meebo has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google" -- more than how they phrased it in the headline: "Google is acquiring Meebo." I'd like to think that if I was selling a startup I would be master of my own destiny, too.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#65

Post by AznHisoka »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #3

To me this makes sense as Meebo has really transformed themselves from a "chat" company to an "advertising toolbar" company. They (for better or worse) absolutely dominate the annoying popup toolbar at the bottom of a website market. Ex: http://www.slate.com

That toolbar is godawful, and I have no idea how they managed to sign up so many companies to display it. I mean.. it's not like they had access to all these advertisers since they were primarily a chat company. It's something that can be duplicated by any one of us. What gives?

Re: Google buys Meebo

#66

Post by danudey »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #3

To me this makes sense as Meebo has really transformed themselves from a "chat" company to an "advertising toolbar" company. They (for better or worse) absolutely dominate the annoying popup toolbar at the bottom of a website market. Ex: http://www.slate.com

I grabbed the Meebo chat app for iOS the day it came out, and it was a great, free alternative to existing options like IM+ and Beejive. It had a few minor bugs though, like tapping 'send' was actually tapping Return, so if your cursor was in the middle of a line it would send a message which was broken in half where your cursor was.

They fixed it after a few months, but you could very obviously see that what was happening was it was inserting the newline, and then they were removing it, and then the message was getting sent. It was an obvious hack and it made me feel like they really didn't understand how to make a good iOS app, and didn't care enough to do it properly.

Meanwhile, they started adding other 'features'. They added the ability to 'check in' to a website, like foursquare for web pages. Except it only worked inside of the built-in browser in Meebo, which meant it only worked for links that your friends sent you via IM while you were on your phone. How much time did they spend implementing a feature that I can't imagine anyone ever using instead of adding actual functionality to their app (or fixing the constant crashes I got all the time)?

That was the point where I basically wrote Meebo off. Sure, they probably couldn't make money providing a free chat service, but they could have branched out in other areas, rather than the idiotic-seeming stuff they've been working on lately.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#67

Post by danudey »

duaneb wrote: post #40
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #3

To me this makes sense as Meebo has really transformed themselves from a "chat" company to an "advertising toolbar" company. They (for better or worse) absolutely dominate the annoying popup toolbar at the bottom of a website market. Ex: http://www.slate.com

I have never seen that before - maybe my brain just tunes it out.

Adblock usually blocks it, for what that's worth.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#68

Post by danudey »

mibbitier wrote: post #52
1123581321 wrote: post #51

I was expecting this or a shut-down announcement soon. Meebo has never been able to provide something valuable to enough people to become a going concern.

I don't think that's true. They had a lot of people using their messenger client. More to do with mistakes and execution. Why did they take $70m in funding? That's a ridiculous amount of investment to take. Why couldn't they monetize that amount of eyeballs?

Or go beyond monetizing eyeballs. Turn it into a live chat service, so visitors to your website can instantly communicate with you. Or do what Chatterous did and let people create custom IM group chats. Maybe they did these things and I didn't notice, but anything seems better than 'Let's put a toolbar at the bottom of other peoples' sites!'

Re: Google buys Meebo

#69

Post by duaneb »

creativityland wrote: post #21
franze wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

buying a user base + migrating them to another platform is a very slippery slope (privacy and PR wise). think it's mostly about developers.

Nothing G+ won't try at this point ;)

G+ is still pretty damn young. I'm sceptical they can upset facebook, but it's not as if it's a ghostland.
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