Now that people are just starting to get comfortable with the concept of the check-in for geo-location, it is starting to spread to other areas like product check-ins, TV show check-ins, and website check-ins. Just a couple weeks ago, Meebo introduced website check-ins as a new feature for its Meebo Bar. And before that, at our last Disrupt conference in San Francisco, two of the startups (Badgeville and OneTrueFan) launched entire companies around the concept of the website check-in.
So why would you ever want to check into a website? I ran into Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg today at SAI’s Ignition conference in New York City, who explains in the video above. The Meebo Bar is an IM and sharing extension that increasingly is appearing on many Websites. Meebo is now testing the concept of website check-ins, where you can check into any site you are on by clicking a button and sharing that on Facebook or Twitter. This is not the same as sharing a specific link, although it supports that as well. It is more just telling everyone you know that you like a certain site and it acts as an implicit endorsement. As a result, you will be able to find new sites through people, kind of like you can with StumbleUpon. A check-in in this respect is very similar to a Stumble.
People who check in the most become “VIPs,” with the idea that individual publishers could then reward their most loyal visitors with recognition or extra perks. You can sign up for the alpha version of the Meebo extension here (for Firefox and Chrome only) to check out the check-in feature.
Seth Sternberg co-founded Meebo. Seth, a Connecticut native, worked in IBM’s mergers and acquisitions department, while also working on corporate strategy and venture capital initiatives prior to starting Meebo.
Meebo is a consumer internet company focused on driving user engagement across the web, reaching approximately half of the U.S. internet population. Our flagship product, the Meebo Bar, provides publishers and advertisers a surprisingly simple way to leverage this massive audience by organically weaving content engagement and brand experiences into the consumer’s web experience. The Meebo Bar is currently integrated into hundreds of premium websites and hosts rich, engaging advertising from many of the top Fortune 500 brands. Meebo...
Badgeville, The Behavior Platform, is the global gamification leader. World-class companies including Deloitte, EMC, CA Technologies, Dell, Appirio, Samsung, NBC, Universal Music, Bell Media, The Active Network, Recyclebank, and hundreds more rely on our SaaS solution to measure and influence user behavior. With the industry’s largest network of partners and integrations, Badgeville provides Game Mechanics, Reputation Mechanics, and Social Mechanics that track, surface, and reward behavior across all of a company’s web properties and enterprise applications. The Badgeville Platform leverages...
OneTrueFan is a service that enables users to see who else has viewed and shared the pages they read. Users earn points for engagement – visiting regularly, reading new content, sharing links and driving traffic – and can compete to be the biggest fan of a site. Players can also earn badges for specific gameplay achievements, such as regularly being the first person in their social graph to find new pages. The service is distributed as both a web...
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