I was playing around with Meebo recently as part of prep for an interview, when I came across this cool product they have called meebome. You can see the widget active on the right side of my blog page in fact.
For those who don’t know, Meebo is a multi platform IM client, allowing you to sign into multiple networks like MSN/Yahoo/Gtalk/Facebook chat etc from a single browser window. Around since 2005, they are VC funded and started showing ads last year, finally trying to monetize on the huge community that they have built up over time.
Its a nifty little widget, allowing you to interact with visitors who visit your blog in real time with IM style private messaging, something Meebo is known for. Unlike some other similar services (shoutbox?) that allow website users to leave messages, Meebome is pure IM, so any messages you leave will NOT be visible to others (except me of course :P). The only requirement being that I need to be signed into Meebo for the live chat to work, which is reasonable.
I have interacted with a few visitors to my blog through Meebome, and must say its an interesting experience!
Meebo has recently been building quite a community website around the core multi-platform IM product that they started with. They have partnered with multiple website with their Meebo bar, allowing people to stay logged in on other sites, and display ads to those users, of course. With their increased user-base, this seems to be an interesting play, and may perhaps bring them to profitability as well.
So wanna talk? Ping me using the widget, and lets see if I am online!