The most underhyped Silicon Valley success: Meebo

August 4, 2008 By

I read hundreds of blogs. Follow thousands of people on Twitter and FriendFeed. I’m seen as THE poster boy for the Silicon Valley echo chamber. But I don’t see much about Meebo, certainly not even close to the amount of talk that, say, Twitter gets (and Twitter has 1/10th the traffic that Meebo does). Why is Twitter on TechMeme nearly every week, but Meebo isn’t?

Well, recently I started seeing some mentions of them on sites like Read/Write Web so I wanted to find out what was up.

First of all, I was blown away. Second of all, I found I was so interested in the fact that this company has more than 20 million 35 million people using its services and most for hours every day (I heard the number wrong, and they corrected me this morning). Yet you probably don’t know Meebo’s CEO’s name. Unless you’re on the service you probably don’t even know about it.

Which is why I spent 40 minutes videoing a conversation with Meebo’s CEO, Seth Sternberg, learning about what’s happening in its business. This is like an MBA-level course on the latest advertising and community trends.  I also got a separate tour of their offices, if you want to see what those are like.

This is why I do video. It’s one thing to read a blog post, it’s a whole nother thing to get a demo, have a conversation, and learn some new stuff. As good as the Read/Write Web post is, I never got an understanding of how and why advertising on Meebo is working so well. Any entrepreneur who is trying to make an advertising business model work should watch this interview for some tips.

So, why is Meebo underhyped? We talked about that after the cameras were off and I theorized one theory:

That A-list bloggers don’t use IM or chat much, so don’t get passionate about it the way they do about, say, Twitter (although Twitter has about 1/10th as much traffic).

Seth countered and said that’s probably true, but that he’s noticed that most of his users are on Internet Explorer, not Firefox or Safari. So, the audience that’s using IM is much more mainstream than the audience that most tech bloggers hang out with.

Which points to another thing I’m learning here. If you are an entrepreneur and you want to reach a mainstream audience, you should hang out on Meebo more to do your research, not on Twitter or FriendFeed.

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  • Christopher Coulter

    Well, file transfers and such via Amazon S3, which doesn’t really work out that well. Credit for trying, at least. No credit for results.

  • ds

    I just want to say well done, Robert. It’s kind of hard to know when something’s worth watching or listening to ( <- a problem to me due to lack of time) but this is the kind of stuff I love to hear / know about. Thank you.

  • ds

    I just want to say well done, Robert. It’s kind of hard to know when something’s worth watching or listening to ( <- a problem to me due to lack of time) but this is the kind of stuff I love to hear / know about. Thank you.

  • http://www.thesunrisestoday.com/ Tim Jahn

    Your last paragraph is a great point. I think a lot of the time, us tech people get stuck in a rut thinking that everyone everywhere does things and thinks things the way we do when in reality, it couldn’t be any more true.

    We are such a small percentage of the overall everything, we need to be aware of this and pay much more attention to the non-tech world and way of doing things.

  • http://www.thesunrisestoday.com Tim Jahn

    Your last paragraph is a great point. I think a lot of the time, us tech people get stuck in a rut thinking that everyone everywhere does things and thinks things the way we do when in reality, it couldn’t be any more true.

    We are such a small percentage of the overall everything, we need to be aware of this and pay much more attention to the non-tech world and way of doing things.

  • girlgerms

    none of the top 20 web 2.0 services by traffic from the recent hitwise survey ever started off as tech geek sites. every single one of them (except maybe gaia online) reached out to a mainstream audience from the start.

    twitter, friendfeed, and digg aren’t the future of the web (as companies, anyway). the future of the web will come from the meebos and plurks and tumblrs and picniks of the world — none of which are popular with the techy/twitter crowd.

  • girlgerms

    none of the top 20 web 2.0 services by traffic from the recent hitwise survey ever started off as tech geek sites. every single one of them (except maybe gaia online) reached out to a mainstream audience from the start.

    twitter, friendfeed, and digg aren’t the future of the web (as companies, anyway). the future of the web will come from the meebos and plurks and tumblrs and picniks of the world — none of which are popular with the techy/twitter crowd.

  • http://growthumbles.blogspot.com/ Curtis

    I stopped using Im services years ago before twiiter arrived on the scene. Good post!

  • http://growthumbles.blogspot.com Curtis

    I stopped using Im services years ago before twiiter arrived on the scene. Good post!

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  • http://www.sashsavic.com/ sash

    well done Robert, great post and great vid. thanks.

  • http://www.sashsavic.com sash

    well done Robert, great post and great vid. thanks.

  • http://journal.marisaduma.net Marisa Duma

    Meebo’s quite useful especially when online from office. Some companies disallow their employees from using instant messenger softwares, thus web chats such as Meebo can come in handy.

  • http://journal.marisaduma.net Marisa

    Meebo’s quite useful especially when online from office. Some companies disallow their employees from using instant messenger softwares, thus web chats such as Meebo can come in handy.

  • http://ephedramaxx.com/ Kyle Sagaas

    I agree with you. The insights you have so provided here helps and I have enjoyed this post. More power!

  • http://ephedramaxx.com/ Kyle Sagaas

    I agree with you. The insights you have so provided here helps and I have enjoyed this post. More power!

  • http://fusionsearcher.wordpress.com/ fusionsearcher

    http://www.ebuddy.com/

    The Dutch answer!

  • http://fusionsearcher.wordpress.com/ fusionsearcher

    http://www.ebuddy.com/

    The Dutch answer!

  • http://ultrareview.blogspot.com/ Tom Schavo

    i use meebo regularly, helps me get all messengers into one.

  • http://ultrareview.blogspot.com Tom Schavo

    i use meebo regularly, helps me get all messengers into one.

  • http://www.meebo.com/ seth

    Hey Catchwa & Les – when we first launched meebo, you would have been right on the money. The primary use case was at work, followed by school and then home. Over time, the user case switched to where meebo’s now primarily used at people’s homes, followed by school and work. I think it’s a bit like Hotmail is to email – you can get the same experience everywhere, so you use it no matter where you are, including at home. So people likely found meebo at work and then brought it home with them.

  • http://www.meebo.com seth

    Hey Catchwa & Les – when we first launched meebo, you would have been right on the money. The primary use case was at work, followed by school and then home. Over time, the user case switched to where meebo’s now primarily used at people’s homes, followed by school and work. I think it’s a bit like Hotmail is to email – you can get the same experience everywhere, so you use it no matter where you are, including at home. So people likely found meebo at work and then brought it home with them.

  • sam

    and what IS meebo?

  • sam

    and what IS meebo?

  • http://poetslife.blogspot.com/ Bruce Curley

    E.B. White…what do you think about Robert’s word “monetizable?”

    Are you still updating “Elements of Style?”

  • http://poetslife.blogspot.com Bruce Curley

    E.B. White…what do you think about Robert’s word “monetizable?”

    Are you still updating “Elements of Style?”

  • http://www.feedhaus.com/ Chris Bucchere

    @Josh Catone: I disagree that meebo doesn’t have a vibrant developer community. There are 50+ third party applications (which doesn’t hold a candle to Facebook’s 10,000+ applications, but still it shows that people are developing for the platform). Also, there are thousands of people who embed “meebo me” widgets and thousands more who integrate meebo rooms (which can be skinned to match your site).

    I’ve been using meebo since the alpha in 2005 and since day one, they’ve been my IM client of choice. No install, cross-IM-vendor support, good buddy-list management, FF plugin, works on port 80 to subvert firewall restrictions, great UI, unobtrusive ads, free, fast, skinnable, etc.

    My history with IM:

    http://feedhaus.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-love-affair-with-instant-messaging.html

    One of the meebo applications I built:

    http://feedhaus.blogspot.com/2007/11/introducing-feedhaus-newsroom.html

  • http://www.feedhaus.com Chris Bucchere

    @Josh Catone: I disagree that meebo doesn’t have a vibrant developer community. There are 50+ third party applications (which doesn’t hold a candle to Facebook’s 10,000+ applications, but still it shows that people are developing for the platform). Also, there are thousands of people who embed “meebo me” widgets and thousands more who integrate meebo rooms (which can be skinned to match your site).

    I’ve been using meebo since the alpha in 2005 and since day one, they’ve been my IM client of choice. No install, cross-IM-vendor support, good buddy-list management, FF plugin, works on port 80 to subvert firewall restrictions, great UI, unobtrusive ads, free, fast, skinnable, etc.

    My history with IM:

    http://feedhaus.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-love-affair-with-instant-messaging.html

    One of the meebo applications I built:

    http://feedhaus.blogspot.com/2007/11/introducing-feedhaus-newsroom.html

  • Guest

    I used Meebo when I worked for a company that didn’t allow us to install IM clients. I never blogged about it because it just wasn’t very interesting and IM has been around for many years. The most excitement I saw around an IM client was ICQ and that’s because it was something new. That’s what Twitter has going for it: It’s something new.

  • http://blog.nordquist.org Brett Nordquist

    I used Meebo when I worked for a company that didn’t allow us to install IM clients. I never blogged about it because it just wasn’t very interesting and IM has been around for many years. The most excitement I saw around an IM client was ICQ and that’s because it was something new. That’s what Twitter has going for it: It’s something new.

  • http://www.brooksvannorman.com/ brooks van norman

    Meebo Mobile and Meebo’s Firefox extension rock. Video, like everything else has a very short shelf life. TubeMogul’s got some great stats on this if anyone’s interested.

  • http://www.brooksvannorman.com brooks van norman

    Meebo Mobile and Meebo’s Firefox extension rock. Video, like everything else has a very short shelf life. TubeMogul’s got some great stats on this if anyone’s interested.

  • E.B. White

    okay. I stand corrected on “video”. But still consider it poor English.
    Bruce, I’d love to update it. But Strunk thinks we should incorporate text writing

  • E.B. White

    okay. I stand corrected on “video”. But still consider it poor English.
    Bruce, I’d love to update it. But Strunk thinks we should incorporate text writing

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    Thiết kế web, thiet ke web, Thiết kế website, thiet ke website, design

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    Thiết kế web, thiet ke web, Thiết kế website, thiet ke website, design

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  • http://yertblog.blogspot.com/ Yert

    I second the motion to put a Meebo Room on your blog Scoble. Otherwise your just letting Meebo sink into the depths.

  • http://yertblog.blogspot.com Yert

    I second the motion to put a Meebo Room on your blog Scoble. Otherwise your just letting Meebo sink into the depths.

  • Go Matt…

    You know the amazing thing about all this new media and hype and all your self agrandizement on here and FriendFeed…

    Is that still one of the top most popular websites out there in hits and searches and relevance is still The Drudgereport. And it’s not a blog, a feed, doesn’t even have RSS capability. It’s just plain old fashioned Internet muckraking by hand.

  • Go Matt…

    You know the amazing thing about all this new media and hype and all your self agrandizement on here and FriendFeed…

    Is that still one of the top most popular websites out there in hits and searches and relevance is still The Drudgereport. And it’s not a blog, a feed, doesn’t even have RSS capability. It’s just plain old fashioned Internet muckraking by hand.

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  • http://extendably.com/ Josh

    @EBWhite. What the hell? Does that give you some kind of satisfaction? Do you not even feel slightly lame for pointing out a mis-capitalized non-verb? It’s like you think intelligence has something to do with pure grammatical correctness.

    Anyway, great post Robert! First time you’ve got me to comment and I’ve been following your blog since January…

    As some of these comments show though, it’s clear to see why what Tech enthusiasts think simply doesn’t equate to mainstream appeal. The success of Meebo is because 90% of people who use IM, use it because they just want to chat to their friends!

    File transfers, sharing, all those extra features… who cares really. The reality is Meebo is successful because it works just about everywhere and anywhere and does exactly what the mainstream wants… chat.

  • http://extendably.com Josh

    @EBWhite. What the hell? Does that give you some kind of satisfaction? Do you not even feel slightly lame for pointing out a mis-capitalized non-verb? It’s like you think intelligence has something to do with pure grammatical correctness.

    Anyway, great post Robert! First time you’ve got me to comment and I’ve been following your blog since January…

    As some of these comments show though, it’s clear to see why what Tech enthusiasts think simply doesn’t equate to mainstream appeal. The success of Meebo is because 90% of people who use IM, use it because they just want to chat to their friends!

    File transfers, sharing, all those extra features… who cares really. The reality is Meebo is successful because it works just about everywhere and anywhere and does exactly what the mainstream wants… chat.

  • st0ragebear

    Did it ever occur to you that perhaps why “most of their their users are on Internet Explorer” is because meebo is INCOMPATIBLE with the latest version of Firefox? (That’s right, neither FF3 or FF3.1 work AT ALL with meebo) There’s a shining example of a web site for ya.

  • st0ragebear

    Did it ever occur to you that perhaps why “most of their their users are on Internet Explorer” is because meebo is INCOMPATIBLE with the latest version of Firefox? (That’s right, neither FF3 or FF3.1 work AT ALL with meebo) There’s a shining example of a web site for ya.

  • http://www.jackventurilaw.com/ Jef

    Great post and it echos pop culture. Most of the best music, movies, whatever is underhyped. Meanwhile, pop music is full of crap. Pop in any medium usually sucks. Always has, always will.

  • http://www.jackventurilaw.com Jef

    Great post and it echos pop culture. Most of the best music, movies, whatever is underhyped. Meanwhile, pop music is full of crap. Pop in any medium usually sucks. Always has, always will.

  • novelistkat

    I really enjoy Meebo. So glad you reviewed it.

  • novelistkat

    I really enjoy Meebo. So glad you reviewed it.

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