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I don't think that's true. They had a lot of people using their messenger client. More to do with mistakes and execution. Why did they take $70m in funding? Th

I don't think that's true. They had a lot of people using their messenger client. More to do with mistakes and execution. Why did they take $70m in funding? That's a ridiculous amount of investment to take. Why couldn't they monetize that amount of eyeballs?

1123581321 14y ago
I know they had a lot of users, but I don't see how they were making money off the client and they had a lot of employees. Maybe the spam thing was working for them but I don't think they would have folded if so.
- mibbitier 14y ago
  Sure. They had way too much investment, way too many employees, and didn't seem to have much of a handle on making money by the looks of things. It'll be spun as a success "Acquired by Google yay!", but seems a pretty resounding failure to me.
danudey 14y ago
Or go beyond monetizing eyeballs. Turn it into a live chat service, so visitors to your website can instantly communicate with you. Or do what Chatterous did and let people create custom IM group chats. Maybe they did these things and I didn't notice, but anything seems better than 'Let's put a toolbar at the bottom of other peoples' sites!'
- shurane 14y ago
  They went after the low hanging fruit, I imagine.
- catch23 14y ago
  Yeah, they had that back in 2007. Meebo bar appeared in Dec 2009. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo#Timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo#Timeline
earl 14y ago
it's very difficult to monetize eyeballs without intent. If you're going to do that, you'd better do what fb did, and generate a fuckton [1] of pageviews. [1] Definition: lots and lots -- 1T / month in summer 2011 [2] [2] http://mashable.com/2011/08/24/facebook-1-trillion-pageviews/ http://mashable.com/2011/08/24/facebook-1-trillion-pageviews...
- mibbitier 14y ago
  Depends. It's easy to make a comfortable amount of money even without intent, but the problem comes when you have massive outgoings (office, staff, etc), and tons of investment, where making a good amount of revenue isn't good enough.
1123581321 14y ago
They have now announced shutdown of the messenger. http://www.meebo.com/support/article/175/ http://www.meebo.com/support/article/175/

1123581321 14y ago

I know they had a lot of users, but I don't see how they were making money off the client and they had a lot of employees. Maybe the spam thing was working for them but I don't think they would have folded if so.

mibbitier 14y ago
Sure. They had way too much investment, way too many employees, and didn't seem to have much of a handle on making money by the looks of things. It'll be spun as a success "Acquired by Google yay!", but seems a pretty resounding failure to me.

danudey 14y ago

Or go beyond monetizing eyeballs. Turn it into a live chat service, so visitors to your website can instantly communicate with you. Or do what Chatterous did and let people create custom IM group chats. Maybe they did these things and I didn't notice, but anything seems better than 'Let's put a toolbar at the bottom of other peoples' sites!'

shurane 14y ago
They went after the low hanging fruit, I imagine.
catch23 14y ago
Yeah, they had that back in 2007. Meebo bar appeared in Dec 2009. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo#Timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo#Timeline

earl 14y ago

it's very difficult to monetize eyeballs without intent. If you're going to do that, you'd better do what fb did, and generate a fuckton [1] of pageviews. [1] Definition: lots and lots -- 1T / month in summer 2011 [2] [2] http://mashable.com/2011/08/24/facebook-1-trillion-pageviews/ http://mashable.com/2011/08/24/facebook-1-trillion-pageviews...

mibbitier 14y ago
Depends. It's easy to make a comfortable amount of money even without intent, but the problem comes when you have massive outgoings (office, staff, etc), and tons of investment, where making a good amount of revenue isn't good enough.

1123581321 14y ago

They have now announced shutdown of the messenger. http://www.meebo.com/support/article/175/ http://www.meebo.com/support/article/175/