Today I am looking at how meebo uses new media to tell their story and market to their customers. It is second in a series of postings on companies profiled in Business 2.0 Magazine 25 Web 2.0 startups to watch in 2007.
Meebo lets users manage multiple instant-messaging services from one site. Meebo's killer app is a widget that places an IM window on one's blog or webpage.
What is "Password" in Tagalog or Russian?
One of the first things that struck me about meebo was its global reach. On their home page you can download their template in one of dozens of languages and through meebo map you can check out an approximation of where IMs have been sent or received through meebo over the past 15 minutes.
The map shows approximately where IMs have been sent or received through meebo over the past 15 minute slice. Lighter dots represent areas with low IM activitiy (even a single IM!) and red dots show areas with lots of IMs
That's cool and in the spirit of web 2.0, meebo users from around the world have volunteered to post translations for free - an incredibly valuable service offered by users that meebo does not have the resources to do themselves.
Despite the global presence, meebo still has the intimacy of a start up as Dan Bernstein, meebo's "marketing dude," explained to me.
No surprise that blogs play an important role in meebo's communications and strategy. In addition to mainstream press, they also reached out to Om Malik and Mark Jen when they launched. Their blog is used to announce products, and more importantly to stay close to their users. And their users reward them with mentions about meebo on 60 to 70 blogs each day. Reflecting its informal style, their CEO Seth Sternberg wrote several postings to chronicle the company's efforts to get funding and why they chose Sequoia Capital for at least part of their funding.
Again like most web 2.0 companies, the product is the marketing. Product developers - the folks that design the product features -- also play an important marketing role. Every meebo subscriber downloads a widget to his or her blog or website to use the service. Dan believes this is more word of mouth than viral ("there is no natural invite mechanism, but that is under consideration"). The growing popularity of the widget on other sites helps facilitate further adoption. It has created an interesting user base - including KBXX a Houston hip hop station and hundreds of librarians who use the service to field reference questions from the public.
A diverse base is encouraging, but the challenge Dan admits is moving meebo from early adapter stage to the mainstream.
How does meebo retain its existing customer base and grow its business by reaching a wider population? To date, meebo has not used advertising and doesn't envision using it any time soon. They have relied on word of mouth efforts, blogs and user-generated content to generate their organic growth, but reaching a wider audience may require using more mainstream media.
Maintaining your edge and crossing over to a wider audience. Meebo is a Web 2.0 company, but it faces the same question that web 1.0 and pre web companies have always faced. It will be interesting to see how they combine new and traditional media and find new ways to use social media to reach mainstream consumers.
Let me get back to you.
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