Meebo’s been around a long time in Web years. The company was founded in 2005 as a universal IM service. But two years ago, it introduced the Meebo Bar, a social toolbar that sites could put along the bottom of their web pages that allows visitors to chat with each other, check into websites, and get all sorts of notifications.
Well, that was a good move. Co-founders Seth Sternberg and Sandy Jen tell me in the video interview above that Meebo now reaches 250 million uniques a month, according to Quantcast. That is up from 200 million just 4 or 5 months ago. The growth has been astonishing. The Meebo network is now delivering 5.4 billion pageviews a month, up from about 2.8 billion a year ago.
Meebo serves ads against its bar (which get a 0.7 percent clickthrough rate, and people who click spend on average 60 seconds with the ad), and shares those revenues with publisher sites. The company employs almost 200 people.
Sternberg and Jen talk about Meebo’s growth, evolution, and what’s coming next. (Hint: think recommendations based on your interests).
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.
Sandy Jen co-founded Meebo in 2005. Prior to founding Meebo, Sandy worked for Xilinx as a software developer for some years after graduating from Stanford with a degree in Computer Science.
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