Comments for Meebo: Web-based IM Is Bigger Than You Think

Meebo: Web-based IM Is Bigger Than You Think

2008-10-14T05:25:52Z

When people gather, conversations are bound to happen. And while people may be gathering and chatting in Web-based IM interfaces like GTalk, Facebook Chat, and MySpace Chat, that user base is relatively insignificant compared to the untold millions of others who live and breathe in online communities outside those walled gardens.

Meebo, the leading "IM in the browser" play, realizes this. And with Community IM, they're hoping to capitalize on it, by incorporating XMPP/Jabber IM into any Web-based community. If early numbers are any indication, they're going to be wildly successful.

]]> Meebo Community IM was announced in July of this year with a select group of partners that included PopSugar, Tagged, Pixo, Addicting Games, The Insider (CBS), DanceJam, Flixter, MyYearbook and SparkArt. Today, Meebo announced that they've added at least 11 more partners to that network, which is still under development.

So how many users could that long-tail of communities garner for Meebo? Based on comScore Media Metrix, Meebo estimates the potential size of the partner network to have an unduplicated global reach of 72.9 million with more than 26 million of those users in the US.

Slated to launch this fall, the movie site Flixster will be the first out of the gates on the platform.

And that's just the beginning. With the types of communities Meebo is targeting, there's a great deal more room to grow once the service is launched to the public:

"If you have an online community with over 20K daily users, Meebo can add IM to your website. Users will be able to chat with other community members as well as buddies outside your network, directly from your site."

Perhaps even more impressive is Meebo's foresight to build its solution on an open foundation. Running on a XMPP/Jabber backbone, Meebo Community IM will be able to connect directly with other popular IM networks. AIM, MSN, Google Talk, and Yahoo! will all be available options. What's more, XMPP will enable them to federate relationships across the various partners, so that a user from one community will be able to communicate with users on another community.

Needless to say, the combination of the extensible technology and the sheer volume of online communities that could choose to adopt this solution translate into a great deal of potential for Meebo.

It's no wonder Meebo's valuation sits north of $200 million.

All in all, Meebo is projecting huge numbers, already. And the estimates of the potential could get astronomical. But, it's also evident that a yet-to-be-launched solution can be met with any amount of skepticism. So where does that put us?

Rest assured, this isn't the first time Meebo has been saddled with "it can't be done." After more than three years of proving their detractors wrong, we remain convinced that Meebo is going to succeed.

Comment from anon on 2008-10-13

2008-10-14T06:37:14Z

I think the jury is still way out on the viability of web-based IM and even more so on the prospects for these community deals.

Comment from Alex Young on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T08:36:52Z

I saw Meebo's talk at Future of Web Apps last week and they definitely know what they're doing technically. It's amazing to think something built on Gaim has grown into a service so popular.

Comment from Robert Scoble on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T08:55:38Z

Hah, I said the same thing here: http://scobleizer.com/2008/08/04/the-most-underhyped-silicon-valley-success-meebo/

Comment from Tony on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T09:22:43Z

This will not be a large succes I think. They are offering 3rd party chat but will not be able to supply buddylist transfer and presence of the community in question.
This means that I will probably have to still get a Meebo account on top of the flixter account and login twice to be able to chat with my friends on Yahoo!

Comment from JP on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T12:41:56Z

The concept itself is pretty neat and I think the buzz and excitement is well-warranted. However, I'm not as optimistic about the feature's success. The momentum is going to go down and I'm worried that websites will think they need community chat when in reality they don't.

Comment from christopher on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T13:51:33Z

why require all your sites to embed community im code when you could have a client that federates with your flixter, popsugar, and social network x, y, z friends list? from a user perspective, i'd rather have an adium that is site-aware and can pull in my friends and conversations across the web.

Comment from Danny on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T16:34:47Z

@Tony: That's a great question. To use Flixster IM, we won't require you to sign up for Meebo. Similar to using meebo.com, you can log in with an AIM ID w/o registering with us. At meebo.com, if you want to save everything (accounts, preferences, etc.), we ask you to register.

@Christopher: We completely understand that perspective. It's one of the primary reasons we're using Jabber for Community IM. If you don't want to chat inside the browser, you can take your Flixster ID with you to a client that supports Jabber.

Comment from Christian on 2008-10-14

2008-10-14T18:21:38Z

Meebo has shown that they are able to build a massive audience despite facing some fundamental gatekeeper issues (most notably: AIM). In order to be worth even close to the $200MM plus valuation they now need to show how they can monetize these billions of impressions. Hopefully they have some great targeting up their sleeves because if they can only run untargeted/ remnant they'll have a hard time getting to a $10-$20MM annual revenue run rate.

Comment from michael.chelen.myopenid.com on 2008-10-15

2008-10-15T11:42:44Z

As much as Pidgin, Adium, and other messengers have brought cross platform chatting to the desktop, Meebo can do that for web based discussion.
XMPP brings significant compatibility with current networks, and others such as Facebook have announced plans to support XMPP. Expanding Meebo to other protocols and networks, such as IRC, may also be important.
Meebo is already helpful for users that want browser based messaging through multiple established networks, and it will be interesting to see if these features can improve 3rd party websites as well.