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Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012

meebo.com

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

#91

Post by sakopov »

citricsquid wrote: post #47
sakopov wrote: post #45

When Meebo announced getting bought out my response was: "Nice, generic and overenthusiastic post-acquisition blog post. They'll likely be shutdown within a few months." Turns out i was off by a few months in my prediction. I still don't understand what Google acquired through this purchase.

> NOTE: The Meebo Bar will continue to be available to site publishers and will see continued improvements and new features in the weeks and months ahead. Answers your question, doesn't it? Google acquired them for the Meebo bar; I would put money on it being acquired to become google+ified. Edit: seems I was incorrect and they were acquired for the team. Disregard this comment.

But you see that was my point. I don't think there is a team or a good product to acquire here. It hardly compares to previous Google's acquisitions.

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

#92

Post by jakejake »

mgkimsal wrote: post #34
omh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The services that they're shutting down were all provided for free with no obvious source of significant revenue. If you were paying them and they were making a profit then you might have a better chance.

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…

According to CrunchBase Meebo took in about 70 million in investment over the course of the company. They started in 2005 and kept growing so you might guess their burn rate is about a million bucks per month. (LinkedIn lists 160 Meebo employees, so a million might even be way low)

Perhaps 6-12 million dollars is insignificant by your standards, but if they don't have the dough then they have to close up shop. You could argue that they could fire everybody and just keep a skeleton crew to keep the site running for a year, probably much cheaper. But what purpose would that serve for them? It would be a dead company at that point.

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

#93

Post by jakejake »

pbreit wrote: post #74
bdunn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I tend to use paid services. The incentive to shut down services that make money is a lot less than those that hemhorrage cash.

Not necessarily. A non-free service is unlikely to get enough traction to remain in business. And I can't think of a single paid messaging client.

I think going into messaging at all would be extremely risky and you'd need to have a really fantastic product and a clever business plan to make it profitable. The space is already dominated by free options - all of which are funded by giant companies that make their revenue on other products.

The only paid client I know of is Trillian Pro. They've been around for quite a while but I have a feeling it's a small company with low overhead. It would be interesting to know what percentage of their revenue comes from the paid pro version vs the ad-supported free version.

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

#98

Post by Luyt »

ricardobeat wrote: post #54
chrisguitarguy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The users are switched to Google services. They'll probably be privately emailed about it.

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

#99

Post by bitwize »

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,…

To me, Meebo was a lyric in "Here Comes Another Bubble", and not much else.

I'm not sure I'd consider it a notable piece of internet history. Google, yes; Netscape, yes; Napster, yes. LinkExchange, no; AllAdvantage, no; Meebo, probably not.

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

#100

Post by Macha »

wedesoft wrote: post #97

IMO Meebo for Android is a really good multi-protocol chat client. A bit like the Pidgin free software for the desktop.

Meebo for iPhone was a good app. Meebo for Android was garbage, unless they updated it last year. It had basically no features. I used it when I first got my phone as it was a name I recognised, but later switched to imo, which is a much better app.
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