I grabbed the Meebo chat app for iOS the day it came out, and it was a great, free alternative to existing options like IM+ and Beejive. It had a few minor bugs though, like tapping 'send' was actually tapping Return, so if your cursor was in the middle of a line it would send a message which was broken in half where your cursor was.
They fixed it after a few months, but you could very obviously see that what was happening was it was inserting the newline, and then they were removing it, and then the message was getting sent. It was an obvious hack and it made me feel like they really didn't understand how to make a good iOS app, and didn't care enough to do it properly.
Meanwhile, they started adding other 'features'. They added the ability to 'check in' to a website, like foursquare for web pages. Except it only worked inside of the built-in browser in Meebo, which meant it only worked for links that your friends sent you via IM while you were on your phone. How much time did they spend implementing a feature that I can't imagine anyone ever using instead of adding actual functionality to their app (or fixing the constant crashes I got all the time)?
That was the point where I basically wrote Meebo off. Sure, they probably couldn't make money providing a free chat service, but they could have branched out in other areas, rather than the idiotic-seeming stuff they've been working on lately.
That toolbar is godawful, and I have no idea how they managed to sign up so many companies to display it. I mean.. it's not like they had access to all these advertisers since they were primarily a chat company. It's something that can be duplicated by any one of us. What gives?
Very strange: the bar only shows up for me in Chrome, no trace of it in Safari (whether or not AdBlocker is enabled, whether or not I'm logged into Slate).
Ahh! Long enough ago that I totally forgot about it, I installed the Block Meebpo Toolbar userscript in NinjaKit
There was a couple of steps in between I think - didn't they also do some sort of news/feed syndication or "following"?
Till Gmail and Google Talk became popular, Meebo was my MSN replacement of choice.
I met the Meebo team at SXSW in 2008 and, being the uppity entrepreneur, I asked if I could stay in touch with them...
Even though they were super busy, Seth would take a call over the phone when my startup was about to get acquired or when we were trying as hard as we could to raise money in late 2008.
When I was playing a game of Underground Assassins in 2011, nobody knew my name. So they went by my t-shirt's logo - Meebo. Honestly, six years after they began, people still remembered their logo.
I still find it amazing how Meebo for a period of time inhabited the social consciousness. Like art, I'm glad to have experienced it, and being in the bay area, felt a little closer to it.
I loved Meebo back in 2005 but they became annoying as hell with their toolbar. I always felt that product was more of a "solution in search of a problem".
Anyways, I'm happy for Meebo team. I'm following them for a while and they seem to be really good guys. Especially, their founding team.
Early rounds were rumoured to be done at $200m valuations so with liquidation preferences I'm not sure how much this really leaves on the table after the investors are paid.
The talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads who demonstrated their talent in developing a product and a launching company. It'd be a safe way to hire a few competent engineers, and I doubt the acquisition price contains much goodwill.
Guessing: Meebo has been trying to make money via their behavioral targeting dataset. Meebo sees browsing activity of users via sites that embed their javascript and also through the plugins they get people to install in their browsers. It's a similar dataset to clearspring, who also do bt stuff. In 2011, Meebo bought mindset media who build psychometrics (eg [1]), with the idea of marrying psychometric targeting with meebo's bt dataset. Thus meebo's value to google: experience building and selling psychometrics; and a client list for psychometric targeting. Psychometrics is another targeting layer that would be sold in Google+ alongside dems targeting.
I was expecting this or a shut-down announcement soon. Meebo has never been able to provide something valuable to enough people to become a going concern.
My first full-time job offer as I was wrapping up college in 2007 was from Meebo. At the time, they were about 12 employees.
I didn't realize it at the time, as it was my first time going through the interview/offer dance, but having much more experience with these things now (from both sides of the process), I can honestly say it ranks as the best I've ever heard of.
a) The technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been through. It culminated in them asking me to set aside 4 hours to come into their office and work alongside them (asking questions if I needed to), writing an HTTP server in C.
I almost shat my pants when I heard the question, but to this day its the most rewarding technical interview of my life. I started off with a problem I wasn't sure I could sove in the allotted time, I _built_ something, and it _worked_. (Well, it mostly worked. There was one elusive bug I couldn't figure out that day. I had to leave because of another commitment, but I promised to come back the next day and fix it. When I got back the next day, a senior Meebo engineer had spent 3 hours debugging my code until he figured out the problem. We code reviewed my code line-by-line as a wrap-up to the interview.)
b) The non-technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been through. They were very concerned about the ever-elusive "culture fit", and the entire team made an effort to get to know me, taking me out to meals, etc. I met all three of the co-founders (Seth, Elaine, and Sandy), all of whom I'm sure were busy trying to build a product and grow a company, but they were incredibly warm, genuinely interested in getting to know me, and generous with their time.
c) They gave me a great offer. For a fresh-out-of-college student with not much real work experience, both the salary and the equity portions of my offer were extremely generous. I didn't even have to negotiate. At the time, Seth explained they didn't want to go through a contentious negotiation process, so they were opening off with a generous offer and it wasn't really open to negotiation. It was, indeed, a generous offer. (Five years of experience later, and I'm making less money, adjusted for inflation, than Meebo offered me as a fresh-out-of-school untried new hire.)
d) The post-offer process was the best I've been through. At the time, I knew nothing about startups, stock options, VC, etc. I didn't even know how much I didn't know. At his own initiative, Seth (the CEO!), took the time to explain the equity portion of my offer. The offer included a number of options and a strike price (standard), but unprompted told me about the other numbers I should be concerned with: total shares outstanding, fully diluted % stake, preference multiples, etc. There's much more transparency about this stuff today (blogs, etc), but at the time no one else explained this stuff to you (and as a stupid college student, you wouldn't know to ask). Even today, in a much more competitive hiring environment, I hear about companies that tell experienced engineers (who know what they're negotiating) that certain numbers which are essential to understanding an equity offer (like total number of shares outstanding) are "confidential".
I ended up turning down the offer, but I have enormous admiration and respect for Seth, Sandy, Elaine, and the whole team at Meebo. Congratulations on your many successes over the years, and I hope to continue seeing great things from you in the future.
This makes me sad for the future of their chat client. The toolbar may suck, but their IOS client rocks. It synchronizes with their web chat interface, so that you may switch between conversations on mobile/desktop.
I like meebo, I always have and still use it (for AIM). I consider myself a fan even though I used to hate: "They got 15 million for online instant messaging?"
I really liked how in the early days they would show off their growth, new office/employees, etc. when you logged in. It subconsciously acted as a source of inspiration.
I honestly did not see that coming. I was a regular user of meebo way back in 2006-2008 but I don't have a solid recollection as to why I left (now using imo.im).
I can only assume that the acquisition has something to do with Google Plus. Well, whatever it is for, I wish them good luck.
Interesting... does Meebo have any patents? I really would've expected that Google could re-develop any Meebo technology for cheaper than an acquisition.
google is smart enough to realize that buying user bases doesnt work so it must be the meebo metrics and their client install base? over the last few years it seems like meebo has been struggling to make chat more of a commodity than it actually is, IMO and at this price its more like a push for investors. as for g+ - desperate times call for desperate measures.
[+] [-] jry|14 years ago|reply
This all comes from someone who left Meebo recently and is still close with people that work there.
Not sure exactly how many, but it sounds like it was a good number.
Note: I said it was the majority, that's what my friend made it sound like, but I'm not sure.. will update once I find out
[+] [-] debacle|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nandemo|14 years ago|reply
Is there a point of working for a startup if there's no financial upside, only the downside?
Not being in the US, I'm curious if people getting laid-off from funded startups get severance packages.
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|14 years ago|reply
They (for better or worse) absolutely dominate the annoying popup toolbar at the bottom of a website market.
Ex: http://www.slate.com
[+] [-] danudey|14 years ago|reply
They fixed it after a few months, but you could very obviously see that what was happening was it was inserting the newline, and then they were removing it, and then the message was getting sent. It was an obvious hack and it made me feel like they really didn't understand how to make a good iOS app, and didn't care enough to do it properly.
Meanwhile, they started adding other 'features'. They added the ability to 'check in' to a website, like foursquare for web pages. Except it only worked inside of the built-in browser in Meebo, which meant it only worked for links that your friends sent you via IM while you were on your phone. How much time did they spend implementing a feature that I can't imagine anyone ever using instead of adding actual functionality to their app (or fixing the constant crashes I got all the time)?
That was the point where I basically wrote Meebo off. Sure, they probably couldn't make money providing a free chat service, but they could have branched out in other areas, rather than the idiotic-seeming stuff they've been working on lately.
[+] [-] AznHisoka|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JulianMorrison|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duaneb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ticks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaysonL|14 years ago|reply
Ahh! Long enough ago that I totally forgot about it, I installed the Block Meebpo Toolbar userscript in NinjaKit
[+] [-] joelhaasnoot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianwaj|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ALee|14 years ago|reply
Even though they were super busy, Seth would take a call over the phone when my startup was about to get acquired or when we were trying as hard as we could to raise money in late 2008.
When I was playing a game of Underground Assassins in 2011, nobody knew my name. So they went by my t-shirt's logo - Meebo. Honestly, six years after they began, people still remembered their logo.
I still find it amazing how Meebo for a period of time inhabited the social consciousness. Like art, I'm glad to have experienced it, and being in the bay area, felt a little closer to it.
[+] [-] mkopinsky|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpikeDad|14 years ago|reply
I assume shortly we'll be seeing new postings from Google on what new personal information they'll be adding to the Google brain from Meebo.
[+] [-] dm8|14 years ago|reply
Anyways, I'm happy for Meebo team. I'm following them for a while and they seem to be really good guys. Especially, their founding team.
[+] [-] kul|14 years ago|reply
Early rounds were rumoured to be done at $200m valuations so with liquidation preferences I'm not sure how much this really leaves on the table after the investors are paid.
[+] [-] rokhayakebe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starpilot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] earl|14 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.mindset-media.com/marketers/profile/
[+] [-] heretohelp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1123581321|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mibbitier|14 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] jorgeortiz85|14 years ago|reply
I didn't realize it at the time, as it was my first time going through the interview/offer dance, but having much more experience with these things now (from both sides of the process), I can honestly say it ranks as the best I've ever heard of.
a) The technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been through. It culminated in them asking me to set aside 4 hours to come into their office and work alongside them (asking questions if I needed to), writing an HTTP server in C.
I almost shat my pants when I heard the question, but to this day its the most rewarding technical interview of my life. I started off with a problem I wasn't sure I could sove in the allotted time, I _built_ something, and it _worked_. (Well, it mostly worked. There was one elusive bug I couldn't figure out that day. I had to leave because of another commitment, but I promised to come back the next day and fix it. When I got back the next day, a senior Meebo engineer had spent 3 hours debugging my code until he figured out the problem. We code reviewed my code line-by-line as a wrap-up to the interview.)
b) The non-technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been through. They were very concerned about the ever-elusive "culture fit", and the entire team made an effort to get to know me, taking me out to meals, etc. I met all three of the co-founders (Seth, Elaine, and Sandy), all of whom I'm sure were busy trying to build a product and grow a company, but they were incredibly warm, genuinely interested in getting to know me, and generous with their time.
c) They gave me a great offer. For a fresh-out-of-college student with not much real work experience, both the salary and the equity portions of my offer were extremely generous. I didn't even have to negotiate. At the time, Seth explained they didn't want to go through a contentious negotiation process, so they were opening off with a generous offer and it wasn't really open to negotiation. It was, indeed, a generous offer. (Five years of experience later, and I'm making less money, adjusted for inflation, than Meebo offered me as a fresh-out-of-school untried new hire.)
d) The post-offer process was the best I've been through. At the time, I knew nothing about startups, stock options, VC, etc. I didn't even know how much I didn't know. At his own initiative, Seth (the CEO!), took the time to explain the equity portion of my offer. The offer included a number of options and a strike price (standard), but unprompted told me about the other numbers I should be concerned with: total shares outstanding, fully diluted % stake, preference multiples, etc. There's much more transparency about this stuff today (blogs, etc), but at the time no one else explained this stuff to you (and as a stupid college student, you wouldn't know to ask). Even today, in a much more competitive hiring environment, I hear about companies that tell experienced engineers (who know what they're negotiating) that certain numbers which are essential to understanding an equity offer (like total number of shares outstanding) are "confidential".
I ended up turning down the offer, but I have enormous admiration and respect for Seth, Sandy, Elaine, and the whole team at Meebo. Congratulations on your many successes over the years, and I hope to continue seeing great things from you in the future.
[+] [-] onedev|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwegener|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] RossDM|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franze|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] speg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karunamon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sakopov|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|14 years ago|reply
Reads like a farewell note to me, not very encouraging.
[+] [-] emehrkay|14 years ago|reply
I really liked how in the early days they would show off their growth, new office/employees, etc. when you logged in. It subconsciously acted as a source of inspiration.
[+] [-] jamesflorentino|14 years ago|reply
I can only assume that the acquisition has something to do with Google Plus. Well, whatever it is for, I wish them good luck.
[+] [-] KenCochrane|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markus2012|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfosco|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grhino|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rorschachh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricardobeat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpkeisala|14 years ago|reply