Since we launched in September, we’ve written over a hundred blog entries (I think this is #129). We do our best to respond to questions on the blog and forum though there are few questions that crop up again and again. A bunch of you are new meebo users and may have missed some of our meebo blogs from the past. So I thought I’d point out some of the interesting ones and hopefully answer a few lingering questions too. Enjoy and let us know if there are any questions we left out!
1. Just last week, Sammie asked us “meebo, why do you call it meebo?” Seth, Sandy, and I actually came up with the name two years ago while eating lunch at CPK. If meebo hadn’t been available, our second runner-up was “chiba.” Here’s Sandy’s account of it from December.
2. How did meebo get funding? Initially we funded meebo’s development from our own pockets. We’re a scrappy bunch and depended upon our old college computers to get things going. When we started seeing growth and needed more machines, we looked for angel investors and then took funding from Sequoia Capital in December. If you are thinking about pursuing a start-up or just want to learn more about the process, Seth wrote three great blogs in January that outline the entire process. milk money: part one, part two, part three.
3. Who uses meebo? Thanks for asking! This is one of my favorite topics and I could happily talk about logins, messages, and peak users all day. Back in October, 1,846 meebo users completed a survey intended to help us understand how meebo was being used and how we could improve. Through this survey, we discovered that meebo was being used most in U.S. office where traditional IM clients were blocked. Simon’s been watching the traffic recently and believes that those numbers have since changed. Now only a quarter of our traffic comes from the U.S. Seth plans to host a second survey soon and we’ll be sure to write about those results.
In terms of growth, back in October we announced that meebo had hosted 10 million IMs. Now we see over 14 million IMs daily and sometime on Wednesday, March 29th, someone sent meebo’s one billionth IM. Whoever you were, thank you! This was one of my happiest meebo moments.
4. Is meebo secure? Back in September, the very first feature we implemented was encrypted passwords. Sandy wrote a detailed explanation of how we protect passwords when you login using 1024-bit RSA key encryption. If you’ve ever wondered what the fine-print at the bottom of meebo refers to, you’ll like reading blog #24.
5. Does meebo use Rico, Dojo, Ruby on Rails, etc? Not right now – we looked at these frameworks about a year ago when they were just gaining traction but ended up writing our own windowing framework for meebo. There’s a lot of interesting activity in this space and we may consider parts of these frameworks in the future. If you’re getting started with AJAX, I gave some initial pointers in blog #23 and in blog #96. For an overview of how meebo works, check out last week’s “nuts and bolts” blog.
6. How does the back-end work? Sandy’s written some meaty blogs about LightTPD and scaling. If you want to hear how Sandy has architected the back-end to support all of the users, take a look at blog #49 and blog #127. We’ve also tried to expose a lot of the tools we use to help develop meebo, so feel free to peruse blog #73 too.
7. Pics! It’s no secret that our most popular blogs are the ones with pictures 
We’re a little picture shy but we’re always happy to point to Flickr where we keep most of our pictures.
Happy reading!
-Elaine
[ comments ] [ past blogs ]
April 17th, 2006 at 3:26 am
Hey,
Thanks.
For creating, developoing..maintaining this site.. the meebo. I am one of those..in who’s office traditional IM services are blocked. This is an UN office..and I dont’ know why they don’t want us to access traditional IMs.
And also I am touched to see the amount of care from ur side. Thanks again.
Just had one doubt.. is this some thing a complete charity.. or social work.. or this is also a business venture for u..
I am not sure if i could make the question clear to u.. well.. if its not clear.. just leave it that way.. I shall ask a clear question some times in futue…
Wish u all good luck and success in ur carrer and life
Best Regards
Shuvro
April 17th, 2006 at 3:43 am
salam
az daneshjouyani ke mikhan ba man ashna beshan
April 17th, 2006 at 4:55 am
actually meebo can be translated into 2 words in Hebrew.
Mee stands for who, and bo stands for inside something (sort of).
so one can say that Meebo, in hebrew is “who is in it”.
if you happen to choose Meepo, it would be better, since Po means hear – “who is in here”.
again, this is not an exact translation, but close enough
April 17th, 2006 at 8:41 am
hey guys! nice work this.. ever since i found this ive stopped using windows. the only thing tht kept me going back to windows was the messengers. thnx to u i dont have to do that anymore!! and can u please please do something about remembering these passwords so that we can do without the pain to type all the crap. once again thnx fr this wonderful innovation.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Quick question – I do love the product, met one of you guys at an event in SF, etc.
Um, I get a notice that someone wants to add me to, say, MSN IM. I click Okay … and nothing seems to happen. I don’t see the person added to the Buddy List (in either online or offline). Am I doing something wrong ….
April 17th, 2006 at 10:07 am
this is an excellent resource! …you guys are so “open source”
; )
April 17th, 2006 at 11:07 am
I was thinking… Meebo is awesome, would it be possible to make it part of a web community? Maybe put it together with something similar to deviant art or multiverse (when that comes out) or maybe even try pairing up with neo.com before that hits beta- not anything like myspace though, please.
April 17th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Please, give us history!
April 17th, 2006 at 11:43 am
i am a yahoo holder while my friend is in rediffmail………..
i need to chat with her. There is no enough information inmeebo to proceed………….wat to do with this????????
April 17th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
I read about it once , but i didn’t pay attention. Really I almostly lose a good chance. It is excellent program. Thanks all
April 17th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
hello, `meebo` uhm well i’ve been using you’re web messenger thing, but two people have added me so far, and i accepted it but they can only talk to me i can’t find them on my list..Uhm do you know what’s going on?..And i was wondering if, have you ever thought of making a feature where you can change your msn name
April 17th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
hey i am in the navy, so meebo is the only way to IM for me, why cant you send a pic or ne thing, also, if someone has a web cam, why cant you see it?
April 17th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
I love meebo it is so great having it and I like go on it everyday!!……My cousin Nicole loves to talk on meebo with other cousins of mine.I love having it dso my dad won’t get mad if I download it on the computer like aol.
Kaiila
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
April 17th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
I love meebo!! It is so fun!! I love leaving comments. My cousin loves talking to cousins on this website. I love staying in touch with other people. I have to leave another comment later! Bye!!
Kaiila
♥ ♥ ♥♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
April 17th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
ehh……I NEED FRIENDS!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!=’(
April 17th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
the name – meebo is good enough.. i cant ever think of other name. meebo is cute
April 17th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
You guys & girls are amazing.
I like the name Meebo (It’s catchy, unlike chiba)
I love the fact that you take the time to detail the ideas, thoughts, & process of meebo to all users.
Glad to see you love what your doing, MANY people don’t!!
~Greg
April 17th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
I believe that part of thre reason I use meebo is because of these blogs you guys publish. I have my laptop and I have all of the IM clients (trillion, gaim as well as yahoo & msn). But the ease of logging in on a web browser & not having to use my own RAM in addition to reading what’s going on behind meebo; the people, their work, that’s what is really interesting to me.
April 17th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Good stuff, I use meebo cause I’ve moved back to windows and gaim doesn’t seem to work as well. It also means I can keep all my communication in one instance of firefox, a gmail tab, another webmail tab, a meebo tab, and a livejournal tab. Clean and simple and with a liveCD I can have it anywhere I go.
good stuff. Thanks!
April 17th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Hi guys,
I just want to say you’ve done a great job with meebo. Meebo has helped me through those boring days in the office by keeping in touch with friends.
Thanks a bunch!
April 17th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Hey guys-
Great work! As I’ve said before, I’m a tech person (IT major at school) and I always enjoy reading blogs about the workings of meebo. Keep it up!
April 17th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Hi guys & gals of Meebo,
U people r doing a great job
) Kudos to ur enthusiasm & the efforts u have put into building Meebo. I have had a doubt since long about the earnings Meebo makes… I am not able to understand what is the source of income for u guys at Meebo. How does it make profits??? There are no advertisements nor any trace of any sponsership.. r u working for charity or for the mere fun of tinkering around with the techno byte (ie technology). I would like some on to answer me; probably Seth would the right guy i suppose or even Elaine..
Pls don’t take me otherwise; i am just a bit curious about ur source of income..thats it.. and believe me i am not from any Adv Agency or anything..
So keep the great work going.
Bye,
Dharani.
April 17th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
… and a good thing you guys didn’t choose ‘chiba’, what with it closely resembling a certain Hokkien phrase that I’d rather not translate!
April 18th, 2006 at 12:36 am
hi there, meebo is a good site to chat but i dont have any friends to chat live, please can u people there become my friends, please…………….
April 18th, 2006 at 1:32 am
can we retrieve emails? does meemo like have an auto archive? see my pc shut off and
i wasnt able to read some msgs today and when i log on back to meebo, its gone.
April 18th, 2006 at 2:11 am
this is cool man . all ims under one roof and that too in ur own language.awesome!!!!!! and what more i can access it at time also when there is a firewall.
April 18th, 2006 at 2:44 am
I want to work with meebo messenger in Tamil language. How can I use Tamil Fonts. Kindly help in this regard
April 18th, 2006 at 4:25 am
i first found out about meebo last week and ever since i tried it out ive bin going on it all the time lol
kool stuff
April 18th, 2006 at 4:50 am
nice one! just want to ask whether i can get the script that you run in your webserver so that i can host my own YM through web? just asking, thank you
April 18th, 2006 at 7:58 am
Meebo es una de las mejores aplicaciones AJAX que he visto en la red, felicidades
April 18th, 2006 at 8:36 am
This is a really neat product!
One suggestion – it would be very nice to have an auto-archive option available with meebo (or at least a way to save the IMs directly from the meebo screens without having to copy and paste to a text editor.).
April 18th, 2006 at 8:53 am
Hi Elaine,
It was really nice to know so many things about meebo. I had really been curious to know most of the information you published.
What you guys have done is not only develop a great tool but also a good place for learning and understanding all the complications faced in startup. Sometimes I hit meebo just to read your blogs
But I still have a question unanswered (sorry if i ve overseen something)
Where do you generate revenues from? I dont see any advertisements published..
Cheerio!
Bharat
April 18th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Hi,
A big “Thanks” to all the meebo staff. The one thing I always wanted to know was “Where do you guys generate money from?”. I don’t see any Ads or any promotions on this site, which is one of the best features of this. I still can’t comprehend where you guys get money from, VC’s expect a ROI, don’t they ???
Eitherways, you guys are doing a good job, keep it up and Thanks for all your hard work.
Chill
Siva
April 18th, 2006 at 9:16 am
I like Meebo, and thanks.
A question, though: without taking the time to actually test it, does your password encryption actually DO anything?
In particular: you’re going out of your way to encrypt passwords using Javascript RSA. That’s interesting. But an attacker is going to capture passwords by hijacking the entire login page, not by trying to sniff passwords out of your sessions. And because your standard login page isn’t SSL-protected, anybody who can sniff can also hijack the page.
In other words, even with RSA “password encryption”, your login process is still only as secure as standard HTTP — which is the same as it’d be if you didn’t bother with the RSA stuff at all.
April 18th, 2006 at 10:48 am
Very nice idea! Meebo should come in handy while using public computers! Excellent service!
April 18th, 2006 at 11:20 am
You misspelled in the intro. I wanted to let you know that i use meebo daily and after i heard about it on the news i started using it daily, i then introduced it at our school and now almost daily i see lots and lots of our school computers running meebo. Thank you very much. Please feel free to e-mail me and i will e-mail you back with more details on how i introduced meebo at our school.
April 18th, 2006 at 11:46 am
thanks for meebo stuff…it is great..keep up the good work!!
April 18th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Hi there!
I just read your fund raising ordeal and I wondered: what’s in it for you guys? I far as I can see, you’re not charging people for using meebo and I haven’t seen any advertaising either. A business in order to be a business must make some money! How do you manage this? or how do you plan to pay back all the money your investors gave you?
I hope this is a not too nosey question.
Thanks!
Karla
April 18th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
these thing r kool (pirate)
April 18th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Meebo has totally saved my relationship. I’m studying abroad for a semester in Fiji, and the university here blocks all the IM-ing you could possibly think of except for lame chat rooms that rarely work. Phone calls back to the US cost like, 2 bucks a minute here, and if it wasn’t for meebo, I couldn’t talk to my boyfriend nearly as much as I can now, and odds are we probably would’ve drifted away. Meebo is a god-send; and I’m not exaggerating. Not to mention I can chat with all my friends back home and make ‘em jealous of me being in Fiji, haha! Thank you so much, meebo! If I get married, you’re invited to the wedding.
Cori
April 18th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Just got finished reading your funding recap. If it’s not too much to ask, what was your hook for a heavyweight like Sequoia? I can only imagine that you’re running at 100% loss every month, don’t have 3 years of revenue statements…. you don’t have ads on the website and you don’t sell stuff… How are you able to make a VC like that see the value of what you’re developing, and how do they intend for you (and themselves) to capitalize on it?
April 18th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
hey thanks for creating the site,
its awesome to use and im glad to be a member, but u could use more colors and junk and have special inputs like jokes or new ideas and stuff… anyways i think this site overrall is AWESOMMEEEE!!!…. byes
loe
April 18th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Hi,
Thank you very much for all great job that meebo has done. I am still waiting for your next innovation, especially Conference room.
Regards,
Bangzii
April 19th, 2006 at 7:47 am
I am expecting a child next month and I’m trying to get my wife to agree to name the baby MEEBO, that’s how much I love this site. HA.
I’m looking forward to the results of the latest survey to see what other features show up. ROCK ON!
April 20th, 2006 at 10:35 am
omg…i love meebo it is so cool…..I get to talkto all of my friends and well when your at school it really does get boreing……….MEEBO ROCKS
April 24th, 2006 at 4:01 am
Meebo Javascript UI (Widgets) are really cool. i wish you guys make them available as “meebo javascript wdiget framework” or something like this..
it will be awesome…
Regards
April 26th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Hi all,
i like thi sone better
http://www.e-messenger.net
May 16th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
sadasd aasdddddddddddd sadasewe treyrthhhhhh ryutmrtytrnrtyrt eyrtyn rt rtyrt ntrytryrt rtyrtyn ry rty y rytyn ry rtyyejyiuytujtyumtyut
May 16th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
lonely gal needs a friend
July 28th, 2007 at 3:11 am
vumupajecn
nice post
April 29th, 2009 at 1:19 am
Flashbacks to the early days! I wonder what your current amount of blog p[osts are sitting on, must be quite a few….and yes, Flickr is still going strong too.
August 16th, 2009 at 12:29 am
have i told you that i love you very much thank you very very much, you’re the best.