Meebo releases iPhone web app
Meebo, the reigning champion of web-based chat, has just released their entry into the iPhone app arena. I had a chance to speak with meebo's CEO, Seth Sternberg, earlier today about the release, and they truly do have a surprisingly innovating iPhone app on there hands.
Context & Ripple Effects
Meebo has spent two years building the arc this release completes: founded by Seth Sternberg and two colleagues without VC backing, framed early on as an AJAX take on Trillian, then funded in late 2005 just as imitators like Kool IM arrived to challenge its web-chat lead. In May 2007 it pushed for monetization and audience with the Meebo Rooms launch and its first ads.
The iPhone web app extends that browser-based playbook onto Apple's device rather than abandoning it for a desktop-style client — consistent with how Meebo has always distributed itself: through the browser, on any machine a user lands on.
First-order effects
- iPhone owners get Meebo's multi-network chat in Safari, meaning the reigning web-based IM aggregator now reaches users away from the desktop without requiring any install.
- Rivals that cloned the browser-IM model, such as Kool IM, face a new front: matching mobile-browser access becomes table stakes overnight.
Second-order effects
- The ads Meebo introduced with its May 2007 Rooms launch gain a mobile surface, so every iPhone chat session becomes additional ad inventory at essentially zero distribution cost.
- Always-on messaging from iPhones adds sustained background traffic to Wi-Fi networks already straining under the device — the kind of load Duke University administrators reported knocking out dozens of access points a month earlier.
Third-order effects
- If instant messaging consolidates around aggregators reachable from any browser, competition shifts from who owns the desktop client to who owns cross-network reach wherever the user happens to be — a structure that favors web-native players over installed-software incumbents like Trillian.
The trend: Web-based application vendors are treating the iPhone's browser as their mobile distribution channel, carrying browser-first business models onto the phone before any native-app ecosystem matures.