Meebo Launches Meebo Rooms (oh, and Meebo now has ads)
Web based instant messaging provider Meebo will launch Meebo Rooms tonight. Like MeeboMe, which allows users to embed a widget on a website where visitors can chat with the publishers, this is a significant new product that will appeal to new set of users.
Context & Ripple Effects
Meebo built its name as an AJAX-based, browser-based take on desktop multiprotocol clients like Trillian — a company that launched without VC backing before raising a few million dollars in December 2005. Its competitive set sharpened when rival Kool IM launched in July 2006 explicitly to battle it.
With tonight's launch, Meebo is extending past the chat client itself: MeeboMe already let publishers embed one-on-one visitor chat on their sites, and Rooms generalizes that into shared chat spaces aimed at a new audience. The quieter change is the business model — Meebo is turning on advertising for the first time, signaling that the free client era now needs revenue.
First-order effects
- Publishers gain an embeddable group-chat product that builds on the MeeboMe widget model, giving site visitors shared rooms rather than only publisher-to-visitor chat.
- Meebo's existing user base encounters ads inside the service for the first time, making monetization visible on a product previously offered as a free utility.
Second-order effects
- Kool IM, which positioned itself directly against Meebo in 2006, faces a competitor expanding from thin client into embeddable social features — pressuring it to add comparable room functionality rather than compete on client parity alone.
- Ad support establishes a template other free web-based IM services will likely follow, since Rooms-style features cost hosting money that subscriptions have not covered.
Third-order effects
- If the Rooms-plus-ads pattern holds, web IM shifts from being a commodity access layer to third-party networks toward owned, embeddable destinations where the platform — not the underlying IM protocol — captures the audience and the ad inventory.
The trend: Web-based instant messaging is moving from thin multiprotocol clients toward embeddable social destinations funded by advertising.