Wow, seems like everyday there’s some company funded with millions of dollars that has little to no traction. That’s really just the name of the game. You invest early in hopes of a big payoff. Keyword there is “hopes.”
There’s not much “hoping” needed to bet that meebo is going to turn into an extremely valuable company. Over the last few years, meebo has kicked Cerulean Studios’ butt and built out a substantial online presence. Cerulean’s Trillian product has become less and less relevant, best represented by the attached Google Trends chart. People care less about Trillian, and more about meebo. Ah, the graph has gotta be a masterpiece to the eyes of meebo employees/backers.
Trillian (blue) vs. meebo (red):
So if meebo is so great, why doesn’t it get more press? Search Google News: there’s nothing going in the news really. On the blogs, you see posts from the official meebo blog about their bday, then some guy ripping meebo as representing everything that is wrong with web 2.0. Geez, those haters could not be more wrong. What meebo has built is a massive audience. With a massive sticky loyal audience, you can do a lot of things. PLATFORM people, hello!?!
Yes, the word “platform” is thrown around far too loosely these days. It seems everybody wants to be a platform. You have Google saying they’re building a competing platform (by the way, what’s the big deal? Sounds like just a catch up move to Facebook’s Platform), then LinkedIn said they’ll do one. By the way, who cares about LinkedIn’s platform? Just look at the quantcast: nobody returns to the site daily, and the people that do have *nothing* to do on the site except check out acquaintances – that’s right, not real friend or real business contacts – and their half year old profiles! (Seriously, does *anyone* actually update their LinkedIn profile? They better go IPO and dump shares fast before that site falls apart thanks to Facebook creating privacy tools).
LinkedIn’s quantcast graph:
Note: don’t be fooled by the graph. People don’t actually use LinkedIn that much when they get there! Plus I still think this recent growth is window dressing for the IPO. We’ll see what happens afterwards!
Whew, that was a bit of a sidetrack. Back to meebo! What could meebo platform have that would be really sweet? PRESENCE! Your friends can tell when you’re online. It’s already an accepted part of IM, so it’s not a gamble for somebody like Facebook where do you really want your friends knowing how much time you spend stalking around? Probably not as much. (By the way, Facebook should do presence b/c it’d help people build out more cool applications, and just allow people to opt-out, it’s that easy!)
So yea, with meebo you can make cool games. Forget this netvibes.com garbage (and all the other pointless web start pages). Meebo can become a start page built off real cool applications built by great developers vs. plugging in some pointless/not useful widget on netvibes. (By the way, I’ve barely used netvibes, but it looks pretty pointless from a distance).
Check out meebo’s growth. There’s a solid business opportunity here for developers. People go IM *A LOT* throughout the day. So give them something to do! Plus, HERE’S THE KICKER: you get developers building sweet applications, and then meebo users use it and invite their IM buddies to use the app on meebo , and since IM’ing on meebo is as easy as using a client, PEOPLE WILL SWITCH TO MEEBO! It’s not the same friction/cost associated with leaving Facebook and going to some other service. People will never leave Facebook. But IM networks give you total transportability of your friends lists, so just transfer them over to meebo baybee! The result is tons of people switch to meebo to get the additionally really sweet platform experience like games, accelerating meebo’s growth even more!
meebo’s quantcast graph:
Note: Don’t be fooled by the numbers, this is just for the US. meebo is HUGE globally and the engagement level by meebo users is really intense!
Damn, this is inevitable if meebo actually builds a platform, but it seems like they’ve been alluding to it since they started, so will it actually happen? WHO KNOWS! But it certainly should, and I really do think it will happen. Another thing I don’t understand: why do talented engineers work for companies that aren’t on a great growth trajectory? Go check out meebo if you want a place that’s going to make a serious impact (and who doesn’t want that?).
Posts I Disagree With (Not Necessarily On the Details Because I Probably Didn’t Read Them, But Just Because They Are Generally Negative on meebo) (aka, PIDWNNOTDBIPDRTBJBTAGN):
September 25, 2007 at 4:56 am |
I agree, I use meebo exclusively for IM now since I don’t have to install any third party software. There’s even a cool widget you can cut and paste onto any webpage so that you can communicate with your site visitors.