Meebo

Meebo was an instant messaging and social networking service provider that shut down in 2012.
It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California. By 2011 it had over 250 million monthly users."Meebo Now Reaches 250 Million People Across The Web". TechCrunch. November 15, 2011.
==History==
Meebo began as a website where visitors could sign in and manage multiple instant messaging profiles at once, including Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ and AIM among others. Registered Meebo users could save their information so all IM connections would automatically be established upon logging in."Meebo: More Features, Continued Growth". TechCrunch. February 19, 2006."Meebo". PC Magazine. August 3, 2010.
After initially being funded by its founders, Meebo later raised $37.5 million through investments by April 2008."Meebo Launches Meebo Rooms (oh, and Meebo now has ads)". TechCrunch. May 14, 2007."How Meebo Got Started And Its Strategy To Make The Web More Social". Business Insider. February 8, 2011."Ambitious Meebo picks up partners: Offers web-based messaging". San Jose Mercury News. July 17, 2008"It's Official: Meebo Raises $25 Million From Jafco, Time Warner and KTB". TechCrunch. April 30, 2008.
In August 2006, Meebo launched the Flash-based "Meebo Me" chat widget for websites, which let visitors automatically start a real-time chat with the site's owner."Meebo Launches MeeboMe". TechCrunch. August 2, 2006. "Meebo Rooms" launched in 2007, which were embeddable, media-enabled chatrooms. Up to 80 people could chat simultaneously and any video links would automatically be embedded in the chat, though at the cost of ads being displayed."Meebo launching media-enabled chat rooms". Cnet.com. May 15, 2007."Meebo Rooms Launched - "like a very very rich widget"". ReadWrite. May 15, 2007."Meebo Offers Tools To Embed Ad-Carrying Chat Rooms". InformationWeek. February 1, 2008."Crunch Time At A Web Startup". Bloomberg Businessweek. June 3, 2007.
In December 2008, Meebo started offering a "Community IM" widget, which was targeted at community-oriented sites and integrated Meebo's services into third-party locations."Even More IM at Meebo: Facebook and MySpace IM Added". ReadWrite. December 22, 2008. It was replaced with the "Meebo Bar" a year later, which provided more advanced chat functionality."The Best Picks to Replace Meebo ". PC Magazine. July 9, 2012.
Meebo expanded its offerings to the increasingly popular social networks in early 2009 by adding support for Facebook and MySpace."Instant Messaging Site Meebo Adds Facebook Chat". New York Times. February 5, 2009.
During the rise of smartphones, Meebo released apps for all major platforms: Android, iOS and BlackBerry. After being among the first to launch a web app for iPhone, Meebo released a fully-fledged native app in 2010."Meebo Is the New King of iPhone Messaging Apps". Gizmodo. February 17, 2010
The original Meebo Rooms service was discontinued in May 2010 and removed the following year. Meebo later acquired Mindset Media during 2011 to improve its ad targeting."Meebo Acquires Mindset Media, Prepares To Venture Into Direct Response Advertising". TechCrunch. February 8, 2011.
Meebo was acquired by Google in June 2012."Google Is Buying Meebo". Gizmodo. June 4, 2012. A month later on July 11, 2012, all of Meebo's products were discontinued except for Meebo Bar, which remained operational until June 2013."After Google Acquisition, Meebo Shutting Down July 11". PC Magazine. June 11, 2012."Google Discontinuing Meebo Bar Chat, Sharing Services". eWeek. April 29, 2013. Meebo's staff was absorbed into their Google+ team.
Meebo was also used as a hack for users to connect to their instant messaging accounts at school or office networks that normally blocked such applications."MSN web messenger". - Msnheaven.com
==Jiggmin==
Meebo announced they were adding online games to their service in November 2007."Meebo's Got Game". TechCrunch. November 20, 2007."Meebo's Got Game". Yahoo! Finance. November 20, 2007. "Q&A: Meebo's Sternberg On Integrating Games And Chat". Gamasutra. November 20, 2007. Kongregate Racing and Platform Racing were among the 20 launch titles, which helped aid their popularity due to the site's millions of monthly visitors."Meebo aims big, introduces games". VentureBeat. November 20, 2007.
Regarding the announcement, Kongregate CEO Jim Greer said:
"Independent game developers have typically shied away from creating multiplayer games due to the inherent lack of traffic density and distribution. The Meebo platform is a great compliment to Kongregate - both are natural places for developers like Jiggmin and Gamebrew to put their games.""meebo Launches Games with 14 Third-Party Developers via the meebo Platform". PRWeb. November 20, 2007.
Jiggmin's partnership later caused him to be mentioned in the book "The Social Media Bible"."The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success". Lon Safko. August 9, 2010.
==References==
Category:Websites
Category:Platform Racing 1 Articles