Meebo and the Mainstreaming of Web IM
Venture Beat is reporting that cross-platform web Instant Messaging service Meebo is raising a substantial amount more money at a valuation of more than $200 million. Consensus among the community of VB readers seems to be that such a valuation is insane. Looking at the details about Meebo indicates otherwise, however. Meebo is a simple, solid service that serves a clear need and has amassed large user numbers.
Relative to, for example, the purchase prices of YouTube or Beebo - a $200m valuation for Meebo seems to acknowledge the monetization challenges at hand. Web IM certainly has the potential to gain far more users than a User Generated video site or any particular social network.
Mainstream Users
We talked to Meebo several months ago about the company's business. Venture Beat writes that the company currently reports 29 million unique users each month. Based on what Meebo told us, those users aren't interested in the higher-tech innovations that many pundits and readers are saying would deliver more substantive value to the service. The vast majority of users login in to a single IM account and IM with their existing friends on that platform. They don't use it to communicate with people on multiple IM services. They just want to IM from school or work without installing the desktop IM client they use at home.
Add in Meebo chat functionality on a swath of new sites looking to offer video, voice and other functionality available through the new Meebo developers' platform and you've got a recipe for rapid proliferation.
Instant is Good
People love IM, synchronous communication and the smooth flow of information IM-style are why we've written here that XMPP (Jabber) could be key to the next generation of web applications. Meebo isn't even alone in rocking the web IM space - Amsterdam's eBuddy is racking up the millions of users and venture capital as well.
Relative Valuations
Early Meebo money came from Sequoia Capital, funders of YouTube and Google. Did YouTube have some drastically innovative technology? No. Could a large company have spent a few million building a great MySpace-clone from scratch? Of course. That's not what it's about, though, in some cases. The ability to get in early on a basic social activity, whether it be online video, social networking or web IM, and then ramp up user numbers - is far easier said than done.
Is Meebo worth upwards of $200 million? It may very well be.
Give it a try, discuss amongst yourselves and witness the handiness of Meebo's embedded "rooms" feature.
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Meebo's valuation is far less. The company has huge potential to add values to IM world.
regards
www.webrexia.com
IM is very similar to email, in that it is an essential service that people love to use, but does not monetize well, if at all...
This is the great mystery of the web that has been debated of late. Are web users receptive to ads? I can't help but note that an effective 30 sec TV spot has a much greater effect than a 250x300 box. The difference is a glance v. 30 secs of attention.
If IM hasn't been monetized by now, I doubt it ever will. But there is clearly big value there. The next BIG thing will be the socialization of the transaction, similar to real life market place.
You don't switch channels on IM when the ads show, so I wouldn't say that it's inferior to TV. And the ads could be text-relevant, which would be a feature for the users, just as search ads. Meebo can also add other features that wouldn't be free: SSL, bigger file sharing, video conferencing, collaboration - everything small businesses would use and are willing to pay for. I would transfer my company to meebo (with all Skype'ing we do) because of the online/offline problems and public archiving skype causes. In other words - with such a huge user base, it's not a bad valuation - especially comparing to other web businesses.
Well worth the investment of whoever investing. Very useful service.
I do love Meebo, but the monetization of IM has never gone well. I think twitter will face similar difficulties. Before meebo there was ICQ then they tried to monetize and they had web ICQ as well.
How effective have initial campaigns over meebo?
It appears someone will always be willing to come in and offer ad-free which is what killed previous web IM platforms. Now it's meebo's turn. I wish them all the best but i'm skeptical.dda
So how are they monetizing exactly? And aren't the majority of their users through other 3rd party IM services like AIM?
Monetization can happen by ad insertion inside the whole communication space created by IM plus video plus audio and gaming, etc.
Google offers ads and they are worth billions. No one seems to care that a "bot" goes through your emails and spits out ads that seem relevant to the email. The same could be done for IM. Bot goes through the chat and checks what you are discussing and displays an add within the chat window about what you are discussing (displayed to everyone).
I actually find some (definitely not all) of the ads that display on my gmail useful. Especially when I'm discussing a travel itinerary through email. Same thing could be done with IM. I'm a Gen Y - I hate being forced intrusive material at me (like tele marketers), but don't mind the less intrusive material such as gmail ads where I CHOOSE to click on it if I want to (similar to the ads that appear in the news feed of facebook). As long as ads don't come up every 5 seconds in a chat window (every 5 mins would be reasonable), all would be fine from my point of view. Oh I know I'll get the privacy people up in arms about this - but seriously you can't hide from anyone anymore. Just ask a PI or google your name.
I really wouldn't under-estimate the pay-for options. People these days are more used to paying for extra services they get on generally free sites.
whatever happened to Trillian? weren't they on top of that market?