Meebo CEO and His "Live Web" Strategy

Last week Meebo landed a $25 million investment from a group led by Time Warner. I caught up with Meebo CEO Seth Stern Sternberg last night about what that means and where Meebo is heading.

As for the TW deal, Sternberg says there's still a lot to be discussed about how the two might partner. But he points to soon-to-be-launched Meebo chat rooms inside Time Warner's TMZ.com as one model. Meebo chat set up next to stories on Web sites for magazines such as Time or Sports Illustrated could let readers talk to each other about that story. "Media companies are really good partners for us" for that reason, he says. In some cases a media property would just pay to license Meebo for the site. But Meebo would rather sell ads to appear in the embedded chat rooms and split the revenue with the host site.

In the other direction, Sternberg is hoping Time Warner's New Line Cinema will be a big advertiser on Meebo. The studio could run a banner ad for a movie on Meebo, and if a user clicks on it, the ad will pop open and present the movie trailer alongside a chat box. The user could invite friends to see the trailer and talk about it.

I met Sternberg early in Meebo's life, and at the time it was pitched mostly as just an easier way to aggregate IMs from different providers, like AOL, MSN and Yahoo. But, Sternberg says, within about 30 days of launch, Web site owners started telling Meebo that they wanted Meebo-like capabilities inside their sites. "Widgets were not around yet," Sternberg says. "No one was doing anything like that."

As Meebo worked out how to insert itself into other sites, a strategy evolved that centered on creating the "live Web" -- i.e. bringing live conversation to previously static Web content. "It was clear we should be the people who try to do that," Sternberg says.

Meebo has gotten flak for not having a way to monetize its offerings, but that's changing. As Sternberg said, Web sites are licensing Meebo or setting up revenue sharing for advertising. And Meebo is starting to be seen as a place to advertise things that people might want to talk about -- like movies or hot new gadgets.

Meebo does seem to be the brand to beat in this space right now. And, usually, if you can get that kind of position on the Internet, the money eventually comes your way. At least Meebo seems to have that promise right now.

. □