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Google buys Meebo

blog.meebo.com

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Re: Google buys Meebo

#71

Post by Raphael_Amiard »

mibbitier wrote: post #58
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "Why do you care if they include you in their user count? Why does it bother you?" It bothers me if they're being dishonest. Tell me how many people actively shared things on Google+ yesterday. Telling me how many people have ever used Google+ in the past isn't useful, and is going to vastly distort peoples perception. > "I guess I reject the notion that since you don't like/use it, no one does." Sure, valid point.…

> Release Wave -> Failing -> Buy Etherpad -> Wave fails

Except etherpad technology is actively being used in google docs, maybe more than it has ever been used in wave, and docs is quite far from dead

Re: Google buys Meebo

#72

Post by joejohnson »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #46
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

Adblock meebocdn.com and they go away.

I'm not sure if I'm adding meebocdn.com to my blacklist correctly. But I was able to block Slate's toolbar through the AdBlock interface...

Re: Google buys Meebo

#73

Post by MaysonL »

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

Very strange: the bar only shows up for me in Chrome, no trace of it in Safari (whether or not AdBlocker is enabled, whether or not I'm logged into Slate).

Ahh! Long enough ago that I totally forgot about it, I installed the Block Meebpo Toolbar userscript in NinjaKit

Re: Google buys Meebo

#74

Post by earl »

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?

it's very difficult to monetize eyeballs without intent. If you're going to do that, you'd better do what fb did, and generate a fuckton [1] of pageviews.

[1] Definition: lots and lots -- 1T / month in summer 2011 [2]

[2] http://mashable.com/2011/08/24/facebook-1-trillion-pageviews...

Re: Google buys Meebo

#75

Post by rorschachh »

google is smart enough to realize that buying user bases doesnt work so it must be the meebo metrics and their client install base? over the last few years it seems like meebo has been struggling to make chat more of a commodity than it actually is, IMO and at this price its more like a push for investors. as for g+ - desperate times call for desperate measures.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#76

Post by rhizome »

AznHisoka wrote: post #65
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?

That is a story I've been waiting to read for some time now. AFAIK, it doesn't exist yet.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#77

Post by rhizome »

Karunamon wrote: post #35
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?

Elite schools tend to have elite people. Funny how that works.

Stanford is not an elite school, it's a status school with what many say is a huge amount of grade-inflation. Elite schools are ones like RPI, Bard, various sports schools (Michigan/Okla, UNC, etc.), and so on. The only "elite" quality Stanford has is its location and the presence of a few celebrities.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#78

Post by cnaut »

durin42 wrote: post #49
jry wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most might be too strong, but it seems pretty bad. The chicago office is gone as a result of the acquisition I'm told. Reports are starting to roll in about other locations http://betabeat.com/2012/06/meebos-engineers-headed-to-googl...

Did they have any engineering folks outside the bay area?

There are engineers in New York and some remote engineers

Re: Google buys Meebo

#79

Post by shurane »

danudey wrote: post #68
mibbitier wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!'

They went after the low hanging fruit, I imagine.

Re: Google buys Meebo

#80

Post by jholman »

joelhaasnoot wrote: post #20
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

There was a couple of steps in between I think - didn't they also do some sort of news/feed syndication or "following"? Till Gmail and Google Talk became popular, Meebo was my MSN replacement of choice.

What the heck is wrong with ICQ as an "MSN replacement"? If the new thing (MSN) sucks, and the old thing (ICQ) still works, why go to a NEWER thing?

Now, I have no trouble understanding why you'd eventually go to gChat; it's clearly superior.

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