Good, I've hated the meebo overlay since day 1.
bad news: that part of meebo isn't going anywhere.
Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
41–50 of 108 posts
Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
#42Oh, come on. Fuck this. Can we ever trust a service to keep running for even a third of our lifetime?
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.
Why did we started talking about facebook now?
Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
#43Earlier 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…
> 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.
Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
#44Earlier 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…
I believe Meebo was purchased to become part of Google+ not to be an independently operated subsidiary of Google. This shutting down doesn't mean that Meebo will leave the internet space, it just means that the next time we'll see Meebo it'll be with a "Google+" logo on it.
Larry Page has been shutting down and consolidating divisions of Google for the last 18 months. This appears to fit his strategy at the moment. Why pay for two chat divisions?
Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
#45When 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.
Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
#46I kind of don't get it. Why do big companies buy other successful companies just to shut it down? Can't they just rebrand it or something? If they can't why even buy? Just for acquiring the technical talent?
Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
#47When 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.
Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
#48What 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 have had to shut down anyway. However the founders were, luckily, able to exit the company first.
Meebo was great at its peak, but Google didn't kill Meebo. It was already dead.
Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
#49does anyone see a trend? startups' general exit is through acquisition. how can you secure customers when your potential users know that some day, your marginal revenues will require you to exit through acquisition? services getting shutdown shortly after..
Re: Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012
#50Sorry 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,…
+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.