IM today, web-desktop tomorrow: meebo's AJAX platform opens many possibilities

The web-desktop draws nigh, or at least an early version of it.  This week, Jon and I spoke with meebo co-founders Seth Sternberg, Elaine Wherry and Sandy Jen.  We found that meebo is not another simple AJAX application: they incorporated two years of work into its creation.  Since alpha release almost 1 month ago, there have been 250,000 log-ins.  At any given time, there are 1,800 people using meebo for IM.  Meebo caught fire so quickly that they were not on the Web 2.0 conference schedule originally, but John Battelle contacted them days before to get them to present their user interface. 

There is no question meebo has fit a need that has existed for several years: how does one at work with download restrictions access one’s instant messenger client?  If AIM express is available, it is still not as fast or useful as meebo.  For example, meebo lets you see a buddy’s away message and profile by hovering over a screen name.  It has been particularly useful for people in India and China who rely on internet cafes for web access which may not have downloaded IM clients.  A chunk of those users have made meebo their desktop on Windows so their instant messaging can always be in the background and readily available.  So what’s the next step?  There are many possibilities, and meebo intends to let users decide what direction they go.

That is what excites me: meebo’s plan is to open up and enable users to create applications that plug in.  It is similar to a Skype model: provide a service people find useful, then make it more useful by creating an API.  Meebo’s instant messaging service could fade into the periphery in terms of overall importance to the service as other people “integrate-in” tools that improve meebo’s messaging system, make add-on features like an eBay auctions checker, and many other “widgets” similar to Konfabulator.  Over time, meebo could be used to “integrate out” to incorporate presence and collaboration on other websites.  The development of the web-desktop is of particular interest.

Overall, it is hard to judge if meebo will ultimately win or not because this is such a new space and there are few people in this space (at least as far as I have seen thus far).  One thing is for certain: in a matter of months (weeks?), there will be more players going live.  In the meantime, it will be interesting to track meebo's development to see what they can do with their head start.  You can stay up to speed by following their blog.

I asked Seth to elaborate on meebo’s integration strategy. Here is what he wrote back:

When we thought up meebo, one reason we were excited about it is that it seemed to break the present barrier between presence and web applications. Most consumer content has moved to the web. A ton of commerce is transacted on the web. Small and medium business productivity applications (salesforce.com, etc) have moved to the web. Given this, it doesn't make sense that presence, represented by IM, is stuck in client software. Since launch, web sites from dating services to productivity apps have contacted us, asking about integrating meebo into their sites.

In the Disney.com example, the thought is to integrate the buddy list (or, perhaps, some other display paradigm) directly into Disney.com. Then, if your daughter is playing Mickey's Playland, and she sees that her friend Emily just signed online, she could drag Emily into Mickey's Playland and Emily would be invited to come over to Disney.com and play with your daughter. Another possibility is to enable your daughter to drag a Goofy icon from the Disney.com web site onto her friend's name (integrated into the site), and have that Goofy icon sent to her friend.

Net: integrate presence natively into the web, be it content, commerce or productivity web applications.

Hopefully Seth, Elaine and Sandy will check back to let us know how meebo is progressing.  You can grab the podcast by clicking here(wma, 2.44MB).

Comments

[wl]

Meebo is great for people like me whose firms block msn/yahoo webmessenger sites and disable .exe downloads. I just discovered meebo yesterday and everything's running great. No popups also mean having control of your IMs than having them randomly popping all over when at work :)

[abhay]

Thanks to the Meebo team, I can chat even from the LABS while I am working!! :-)

[amy]

wat u ment to do on it

[happy]

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