Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012 • Hacker News Board

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#51

Post by saumil07 » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:33 PM UTC

mrchess wrote: post #48

What is with all the hate? Meebo tried, tried again, they failed, so they exited. 1. Meebo Messenger was great, but was not pulling in nearly enough revenue 2. Meebo tried to pivot to an advertising bar for more revenue with no luck Understand that Google probably didn't buy Meebo with the intent of shutting its services. Meebo was most likely already failing (hence the 70MM overall raise and 100MM exit), and would h…

Indeed. The Meebo Product/Eng team by all accounts was excellent. Same for the exec team. At the end of the day they were bitten by the same things Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger figured out a long time ago. Monetizing IM is hard.

But at least they had the gumption to "go for it". Respect.

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#52

Post by mibbitier » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:38 PM UTC

dot wrote: post #50

joering2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. This is truly sad. One can only hope that the more Google kill, the more enterprenours will be unwilling to sell them their project (baby).

Let's not kid ourselves, browser based instant messaging across different protocols is not that interesting anymore. Facebook, What's App and iMessages won. This will free up this capable team to work on something more current.

Let's not kid ourselves. Millions of people use instant messaging daily. Facebook in no way "won".

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#53

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:46 PM UTC

saumil07 wrote: post #51

mrchess wrote: post #48

What is with all the hate? Meebo tried, tried again, they failed, so they exited. 1. Meebo Messenger was great, but was not pulling in nearly enough revenue 2. Meebo tried to pivot to an advertising bar for more revenue with no luck Understand that Google probably didn't buy Meebo with the intent of shutting its services. Meebo was most likely already failing (hence the 70MM overall raise and 100MM exit), and would h…

Indeed. The Meebo Product/Eng team by all accounts was excellent. Same for the exec team. At the end of the day they were bitten by the same things Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger figured out a long time ago. Monetizing IM is hard. But at least they had the gumption to "go for it". Respect.

[deleted]

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#54

Post by ricardobeat » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:48 PM UTC

chrisguitarguy wrote: post #43

mgkimsal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked in to this particular instance, but in general... why buy a company that has no significant revenue? It's not like it's some shock to google - "oh no, meebo doesn't make enough money!?" So... yeah, the services were provided 'free' in some sense, but meebo was able to continue running before this. Just... yeah.. buy stuff, shut it down. If it's not a significant source of revenue, it probably doesn't…

> why buy a company that has no significant revenue? Because users are often just as if not more valuable than the money a company makes. Google probably bought Meebo because they thought the product was a good fit for their new social direction and because it already has a user base. As far as the services they're shutting down, most of them are in conflict with things Google+ does.

If they are shutting down every user-facing service, how is the userbase relevant?

From the news they're only interested in the Meebo Bar installed base, which are not end-users.

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#55

Post by citricsquid » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:48 PM UTC

mrchess wrote: post #48

What is with all the hate? Meebo tried, tried again, they failed, so they exited. 1. Meebo Messenger was great, but was not pulling in nearly enough revenue 2. Meebo tried to pivot to an advertising bar for more revenue with no luck Understand that Google probably didn't buy Meebo with the intent of shutting its services. Meebo was most likely already failing (hence the 70MM overall raise and 100MM exit), and would h…

Huh, so if Meebo is already "dead" why did Google buy Meebo? Google bought Meebo last week!

Surely the conclusion from this is that Google bought Meebo FOR the Meebo bar, not that the Meebo bar has failed. The Meebo bar product is the one they're continuing!

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#56

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:50 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #55

mrchess wrote: post #48

What is with all the hate? Meebo tried, tried again, they failed, so they exited. 1. Meebo Messenger was great, but was not pulling in nearly enough revenue 2. Meebo tried to pivot to an advertising bar for more revenue with no luck Understand that Google probably didn't buy Meebo with the intent of shutting its services. Meebo was most likely already failing (hence the 70MM overall raise and 100MM exit), and would h…

Huh, so if Meebo is already "dead" why did Google buy Meebo? Google bought Meebo last week! Surely the conclusion from this is that Google bought Meebo FOR the Meebo bar, not that the Meebo bar has failed. The Meebo bar product is the one they're continuing!

The fact that Google believes it may be able to derive value from the Meebo bar product does not mean that Meebo was in a position to derive similar value at a palatable level of risk.

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#57

Post by Karunamon » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:51 PM UTC

linhat wrote: post #21

Sorry for the language, but WTF GOOGLE? Meebo has been around since forever (well, actually 2005) when it was only a web messenger and used by a LOT of people whenever you couldn't or wouldn't want to install a native messaging app, or messaging was blocked on your network. I actually know people that used Meebo exactly for that reason, no installation required and furthermore if you created yourself a Meebo account,…

Honestly, there are better web messengers out there. Off the very top of my head, there's IM+ and eBuddy. Hell, even Trillian has a web version now.

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#58

Post by Karunamon » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:54 PM UTC

jyap wrote: post #37

pixie_ wrote: post #17

I guess the 'dont be evil' phase of google is long past huh.

You must be new here. But seriously this is a surprisingly fast phase out with no further announcement from the new owners Google. No publicly stated alternatives or transition plan.

Not sure what "transition plan" they could possibly offer. They only exist as a frontend to other IM services. It takes literally 5 minutes to duplicate 10 IM accounts on another identical service (IMO,ebuddy,trillian,implus).

The only thing they had of value were the logs, and they're giving those out to download.

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#59

Post by brandnewlow » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:55 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #55

mrchess wrote: post #48

What is with all the hate? Meebo tried, tried again, they failed, so they exited. 1. Meebo Messenger was great, but was not pulling in nearly enough revenue 2. Meebo tried to pivot to an advertising bar for more revenue with no luck Understand that Google probably didn't buy Meebo with the intent of shutting its services. Meebo was most likely already failing (hence the 70MM overall raise and 100MM exit), and would h…

Huh, so if Meebo is already "dead" why did Google buy Meebo? Google bought Meebo last week! Surely the conclusion from this is that Google bought Meebo FOR the Meebo bar, not that the Meebo bar has failed. The Meebo bar product is the one they're continuing!

Google has a precedent of buying up startups that "discover" and conquer a new piece of mainstream media web sites.

They bought Feedburner way back in 2007 because they'd come to own RSS feeds at almost all the major publishers.

Now they're buying Meebo because that will let them own the toolbar across the bottom of lots of major publishers...where they will certainly start surfacing Google + bullcrap that no one wants to see.

Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

#60

Post by bpm140 » Sat, Jun 09, 2012, 10:55 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #55

mrchess wrote: post #48

What is with all the hate? Meebo tried, tried again, they failed, so they exited. 1. Meebo Messenger was great, but was not pulling in nearly enough revenue 2. Meebo tried to pivot to an advertising bar for more revenue with no luck Understand that Google probably didn't buy Meebo with the intent of shutting its services. Meebo was most likely already failing (hence the 70MM overall raise and 100MM exit), and would h…

Huh, so if Meebo is already "dead" why did Google buy Meebo? Google bought Meebo last week! Surely the conclusion from this is that Google bought Meebo FOR the Meebo bar, not that the Meebo bar has failed. The Meebo bar product is the one they're continuing!

Google bought Meebo for the team, not the product.