*Voting ends Jan 5th!* - Meebo has been nominated for the “Best Application or Service” category in The Crunchies. Please help by casting your vote here! (You can vote once a day!)
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Editor’s note: This is the first of what I hope will be many Meebo blog posts in a foreign language. Meebo users are from all over the world, and our office is no exception. Here, Marcus writes in his native Swedish about the difference between breakfast in Sweden and in the USA. Marcus has provided an English translation below. Thanks for reading!

När jag satte mig ner för att äta frukost imorse slog det mig hur mycket min svenska frukost skiljer sig från min amerikanska. Nu är jag nyfiken på era frukostvanor! Vad utmärker dem?

I Sverige där jag växte upp, äter jag oftast detta till frukost:

* Bröd med smör och svensk hårdost - Västerbottenost är helt klart min favorit!

* En eller två koppar svart bryggkaffe (visste ni att samtliga Skandinaviska länder tillhör de tio länder i världen som konsumerar mest kaffe per capita?).

* En skål yoghurt med müsli.

I USA där jag bor, äter jag vanligtvis annat till frukost:

* En rostad bagel - jag föredrar bagels med sesamfrön eller lök ovanpå - med cream cheese, tomater och groddar. Den godaste bageln serveras helt klart i New York!

* Ägg - stekta tills de är krispiga - med bacon och/eller korv. Och tabasco. Massor av tabasco! Ägg och bacon är inte ägg och bacon utan tabasco!

* En eller två koppar kaffe (dock inte lika gott som svenskt kaffe – amerikanskt kaffe behöver definitivt mjölk).

Vad äter alla ni till frukost? Och när ni varit ute och rest, vad har folk ätit till frukost i de länder ni besökt? Berätta gärna i kommentarerna!

Vi ses på meebo!

ps. Tack till Mårten för korrekturläsning av Svenskan!

-Marcus

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This morning I woke up and it struck me as I sat down to have breakfast how different breakfast is in Sweden and the US. I am curious to hear what breakfast is like where you are from!

In Sweden, where I was born and raised, my typical breakfast consists of

* A slice of bread, spread with butter and topped by a slice of hard cheese - the stronger, more throat-itching cheese the better!
* A cup or two of black coffee (The four Scandinavian countries are all in the world’s top 10 coffee-consuming countries per capita! Wikipedia)
* A bowl of yoghurt and müsli

Meanwhile, in the states, my breakfast will be something like

* A bagel with cream cheese, preferably sesame or onion, toasted, with fresh tomatoes and sprouts. Bagels are good everywhere, but the NY ones are always the best!
* Eggs, preferably sunny side up, with bacon and/or sausage, cooked until right before they get crispy. And hot sauce. Lots of hot sauce. Eggs ‘n bacon breakfast is not eggs n’ bacon breakfast without hot sauce.
* A cup or two of coffee (You can take the Swede out of Sweden, but I guess you can’t take the coffee out of the Swede!)

I wonder: where you are from, does breakfast differ from my American and Swedish breakfasts? What do you have for breakfast?

See you all on meebo!

-Marcus

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*UPDATE* - Meebo has been nominated for the “Best Application or Service” category in The Crunchies. Please help by casting your vote here!

On the Friday before Christmas I flew back from California to Boston, and while New York has stopped appearing in my dreams telling me to move back, there’s still a lot to miss about the East Coast. Friday afternoon saw a major snowstorm in the Northeast - after my flight was delayed for two hours in Nashville (the only airport I’ve ever been to that has restaurants with live country music), I had to be picked up at midnight from the airport and driven to my house at an average speed of about 30mph because the roads were so snowy.

The Coffee Shop

I stopped into a coffee shop in Harvard Square (home of Harvard University, and generally a great place to hang out in Cambridge) the other day. The street was full of snow and slush - the temperature was well below the freezing point - but inside the coffee shop, there was permeating warmth, the smell of rich chocolate and coffee (it’s really a chocolate/desserts shop that happens to serve coffee), and people bundled up in thick coats, sweaters, and scarves. The weather may be uncomfortably cold, it gets your shoes wet, and cakes your car with salt and grime, but people here use the cold as a perfect excuse to bundle up and look cozier and more comfortable than I’ve ever seen anyone in California. I’m told that rain is a major feature of the winter weather in California, and as much as I’ll welcome the change (I like rain), I scarcely think anyone over there will walk through the rain with the cozy smiles that downy jackets, woolen sweaters, and cashmere scarves give you.

The Library

I’m writing this from the Needham Public Library, in my hometown, sitting at a rich wooden desk next to a wall of windows with wintery light streaming through them. Florida may be The Sunshine State, but there’s nothing like sun when it’s reflecting off mountains of white snow. Outside, the parts of the pavement that aren’t covered with snow are still wet from it melting, and I’m looking down onto a row of trees, bare except for pockets of snow and ice stuck to them and clusters of deep red berries. The sun is out, the heat is on, and the feeling of having come in from the cold, crisp air outside makes the whole scene even warmer. I am home.

“Later on, we’ll conspire
As we dream, by the fire.

To face, unafraid, the plans that we’ve made
Walking in a Winter Wonderland.”

Happy New Year.

-a

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*UPDATE* - Meebo has been nominated for the “Best Application or Service” category in The Crunchies. Please help by casting your vote here!

The holidays are a nice chance for everyone at Meebo to take a bit of a break and relax after a busy year.  A lot of us are headed home to various locations all around the world.  As for myself, I’m back home in Boulder, Colorado with my family where I grew up.

Stepping off the plane in Denver, I was greeted with quite a surprise because it was really COLD.  San Francisco Bay Area natives had been complaining about the cold temperatures there last week.  At our office in Mountain View, the overnight temperatures had been hovering around freezing, the kind of cold weather you only get every couple years in our part of California.  Back in Denver, this was actual cold weather.  It was well below freezing and didn’t climb above freezing for several days.

The cold weather, of course, didn’t stop my family’s rambunctious golden retriever Luke from insisting on going for a walk even when it was 6 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 14 Celcius) outside.  I bundled up as best I could, but Luke was completely unfazed by the cold.

The holidays are a time of lots of special traditions for our family. Once my brother and I get home to Colorado, my family puts up our Christmas tree together. It’s an hours-long process of tweaking things until everything looks just right. Then, every year on Christmas, we start the day off with brunch at home. Later in the day, my dad’s whole side of the family gathers at my grandparents’ house here in Boulder. We wind up with a sizable crowd of more than 20 people. It’s a fun time to catch up, eat good food, play board games, and just enjoy each other’s company.

Alright, it’s time for me to head out because Luke is asking for another chilly walk.

What are some of your holiday traditions?  Best wishes for a very happy holiday season from all of us here at Meebo.

Jim

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It’s been way too long since I wrote my last blog post, so why not slip in right before year end?
I was standing in line for lunch the other day and Chris came up to me and said, “So it’s been a really big year for Meebo.”

Of course I wondered what he was thinking, and he started listing off everything that Meebo had done in the last twelve months. Talk about some good perspective! We’re often so focused on the next great feature to code, or the next business problem to conquer, that we rarely take a step back to look at everything we’ve accomplished.

So, let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane…

The year opened with two major business projects and one massive technical project. AOL had been quietly working on their Open AIM 2.0 initiative. They’d contacted us in hopes that we’d participate in the program, and by March we’d signed a formal partnership between Meebo & AIM. Best moment: being on a business trip to San Diego, arriving to the airport only to have my phone die while I was speaking with someone at AOL about the partnership, and borrowing one of the maintenance facility people’s phone to continue the conversation.

The second major business project was a big joint effort between me, Martin and Natalie. We were working to raise Meebo’s next round of venture funding. By April, we had added three new investors to Meebo (JAFCO, Time Warner & KTB). Memorable moment: standing in the aisle of a United flight from LA to NYC along with Martin and Kevin in an impromptu “meeting,” for like an hour, when the flight attendant came up to us and said, “can I get you guys a conference room?”

The major technical project was one a bunch of you probably missed entirely (actually, that would be the best of all worlds). Sandy and team were feverishly working to replace the entire backend architecture of Meebo in the hopes of making it both scalable, so that we could support many more users, and also more extendable, so that we could keep adding the features we’ve been working on. By March we were done and released. Best quote (and I’m totally going to butcher this): Sandy says, “it’s like reaching into your body, wrenching out your heart, and replacing it with a spiffy new one – all without you feeling a thing.”

We also had a number of other big wins on the distribution side this year. Our team worked closely with a number of companies on either working to get Meebo Rooms or Community IM embedded in their web sites. Some of the folks we partnered with include Hearst, myYearbook, Viacom’s Addicting Games, Flixster, Universal Music Group, and many many more. We also signed a partnership with MySpace…one of the reasons MySpace IM is now available in Meebo today!

On the product side of things, as Mark said, we launched the first new IM networks in Meebo in three years! Both MySpace and Facebook IM are now available in Meebo. The other really big product that we spent a good chunk of this year working on was Community IM. So many of our partners and friends were asking us for 1:1 IM in their sites that it became very clear that we needed to figure out how to get that done. You can see the first launch of Community IM over at Flixster.com.

Another big effort this year was around monetization. As many of you know, we always wanted to make sure that we built advertisements into Meebo in a way that would add to the user experience. Our team spent months dreaming up and implementing the original designs, and we continue to refine them. We’ve had great advertisers, from Sony to Samsung to Havaianas. Even better, from the statistics it’s clear that you all really enjoy the ads. Not only do you click on them 10-20x the amount most ads in the internet are clicked on, but you also spend a fair chunk of time with the ad after you click on it. Nice!

I guess a year’s a pretty long time, and so lots got done. There were a bunch of other things that happened this year that are pretty great. Two that stand out: Meebo for the iPhone and Google’s Android phone.

How many more of you started using Meebo in some way this year? A mere 15 million unique people monthly. In total, more than 40 million people now use Meebo monthly.

And finally, perhaps the best accomplishment of all – Meebo’s team continued to grow with really fantastic people coming on board. For those of you who’ve been using Meebo for awhile, you know that we sometimes talk about how we go about looking for talented folks to join the Meebo team, and that we keep the bar to join extremely high. We’re incredibly fortunate to get to work with such an amazing group of folks!

Happy holidays and a Happy Happy New Year to everyone!

Seth

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So as promised, and in the spirit of giving, the new winter-themed wallpaper I designed is now available! Sure, you might think that this little wallpaper isn’t as cool a gift as getting MySpace and Facebook in Meebo, but I hope you like it anyway.

To access the wallpaper, just click “preferences” and select “appearance” from inside Meebo. If you are logged in to Meebo right now and are reading this, you can select it for your background by just clicking here!

And for those of you that are living where winter is warm, think of this as a window into a winter wonderland.

Happy Holidays everyone!

David

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It’s been a while since we added support for a new IM network. In fact, aside from our first Community IM network Flixster a month or two ago, the last networks we added were Jabber and Google Talk on September 19th, 2005.

Over the course of the day, we’re rolling out support for not one, but TWO new networks: MySpace and Facebook.  These are two of the biggest social networks in the world, and we’re sure many of you use them on a daily basis.  So click that “sign on to more accounts” link and let us know what you think! We’re always hard at work trying to create the best user experience possible, so please let us know about any problems you have or suggestions for improvements.

Many people outside of Meebo helped make this happen. First off, thanks to the folks at MySpace who encouraged us and helped us to test and gave us their support. A particular shout out to Ali, Dawn and Tom.

And as always, we’re pretty heavy users of open source software here at Meebo, and these changes are no different. We’d also like to thank Eion Robb, who created the Pidgin Facebook Chat plugin.  Casey Ho, who helped polish the Facebook Chat plugin. And everyone else who has helped out with Pidgin and libpurple over the years! We’ve already contributed many changes back to these projects, and hope to continue doing so. Let us know what you all think, and of course, send in any bugs you may find!

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Update: Thanks everyone for the comments and tips. Travis is the winner of this impossible search challenge and the proud recipient of a new meebo tee. He came the closest to locating the Japanese manufacturer of wooden rock candy sticks online at Alibaba. Also, thanks to Oh! Nuts for sending a batch of rock candy to help out with my holiday gift giving - truly appreciate it!

Around this time of year, I start thinking about making holiday cookies for friends. Last December, after 12 cups of sugar and 33 cups of flour, I baked nine types of holiday confections, from Molasses Spice Cookies to Applesauce Cake to Pecan Rugelach. My original list had ten baked goods but the tenth item, rock candy, turned out to be surprisingly tricky.

Rock candy should be pretty straight-forward—it’s simply sugar. And when I was young, my science teacher made rock candy by boiling sugar water, dropping a string into the sugar syrup, and then monitoring the sugar crystallizations over the upcoming week.

Now when I think of rock candy, I don’t think of the classroom science experiment version on a thread. I think of the old-fashioned rock candy with a wooden dowel and a round nubby end. And as I was preparing my shopping list, I decided that the rock candy just wouldn’t be holiday-gift-worthy without those classic wooden dowels. So, I started my Internet search for this essential baking article.

Hours later, I realized that I had stumbled across an impossible search. I’ve purchased many random things on the Internet thanks to Craigslist, eBay (yes, I even have a blue star), and small online merchants. However, finding those wooden rock candy sticks online is near-impossible. Search terms like “wooden, dowels, sticks, rock candy, baking supplies, craft supplies” simply didn’t get me any closer. I consider myself pretty persistent (some might say stubborn), but “wooden rock candy sticks” is the hardest online query I’ve ever come across.

This led me to thinking about what other things on the Internet should be easier to find. For instance, I wish I could search for “airplane tickets under $100 leaving my city” more easily. I had a lively discussion with a friend about how unlikely it really is for monkeys to type out Shakespeare’s MacBeth even given oodles of time. However, when I wanted to prove my point, I couldn’t find the character count for Macbeth online. Similarly, I wish it were easier to find my best friend from junior high whose maiden name was Smith. And as much as web recommendation engines have matured, I haven’t been able to find a movie site that can predict which films I should see in the theatre better than just asking my friends what they’ve liked recently.

Today, I prepared my baking list again in anticipation of a 2-day cooking spree. I checked to see if “wooden rock candy sticks” was any easier to find this year and am still empty-handed. However, if anyone can find an online store with them, post it here and I will happily send you a meebo tee! I’d also love to hear of other impossible search queries that others have run across recently.

Off to baking!

Take Care,
-Elaine

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Winter’s here. At least the California kind.

Last night we had thunder, lightning, and rain here in the Bay Area, and that means Tahoe is going to get some snow.

So while everyone else is trying to remember where they packed away their skis and snowboards, I am thinking it’s time for another winter wallpaper. I am working on it right now, but since the snow has arrived before my wallpaper is ready, I thought I would remind you about the Meebo winter-themed wallpaper that I created last year:

You can read about it here, and you can find it by clicking on “preferences” and choosing “appearance” when you are logged in to Meebo. And if you are reading this from inside Meebo right now, you can select it for your background by simply clicking here!

Enjoy, and stay tuned for another cool Meebo wallpaper soon.

Stay warm!

David

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It appears many people don’t trust company blogs. In fact they trust message boards, direct mail, and even social network pages more. OUCH.

One of the analysts at Forrester Research, the company that conducted the survey, provided a nice little heuristic test to evaluate whether a blog would qualify as one of the few that are deemed trustworthy.

I think we are pretty trustworthy but let’s do a quick review of the test and see how Meebo fares:

Writing Style: For humans! - We get a “Great”

Topics: Lifestyle-focused; no corporate blather or only industry topics - Looks like this gets a “Great” too!

Humility: Admits when wrong and discusses ways to improve - If you saw the posts about AOL notifications, you know we get a “Great” here too

Linking Behavior: We love links, even vegan ones! - Ok so maybe we don’t link to competitors or critics, so I guess that’s just a “Good”

Customer Inclusion: Includes snippets about customer experiences - Only results are “Good” or “Bad” on this one, but once again we get top marks!

Comments: Published instantly and negative comments are not censored - We love to hear what you have to say, so we get a “Great” and a “Great”!

Frequency: We post two or three blogs a week, and are very consistent - Yet another “Great”!!!!

So by my (totally impartial) analysis, and after reviewing based on these very objective and professionally-designed heuristics, it appears that the Meebo blog is definitely trustworthy.

Let us know if there’s anything in particular you’d like to read about!

-Greg

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One of my favorite events at Meebo is Hack Day. If you’ve been following our blog for a while then you know what I’m talking about. About once every two months or so, we take a break to work on whatever we want, as long as it’s related to Meebo in some way.

Right before Thanksgiving we had another Meebo Hack Day. Hack Days sure have come a long way. Today I wanted to give you an inside look at how we run our Hack Day.

Hack Day kicks off at 10am on a Thursday and finishes at 4pm on Friday—so folks actually get a little bit more than 24 hours. People are allowed to work in teams, and they often do—it’s also a great way to work with someone you don’t work with under normal circumstances.

To make things a bit more interesting we also have Hack Day awards. Meebo folks can submit their hack day projects for consideration in one of three categories:

At the end of Hack Day, we all get together and present our projects. This past Hack Day, practically everyone participated and we had 17 different projects! There were 5 product hacks, 5 business hacks, and 7 culture hacks. The projects ranged from exploring new ways to share to Adobe AIR to a new fabulous new T-Shirt design to personalized holiday ornaments everyone at Meebo. After presentations we vote for the best hacks in each category. After that, we vote for the best overall hack among the category winners.

Keep an eye on our blog and we’ll let you know when one of these Hack Projects makes it out into a release.

Our next Hack Day is in February. What hack projects would you work on if you were here at Meebo? Maybe you could suggest some ideas for our next Hack Day!

Chris

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