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Meebo Upgrades Chat, Makes Media-Sharing Easier Across the Social Web Posted: 09 Jun 2009 10:00 AM PDT Meebo has made some major upgrades to one of its product services, the Meebo Bar. As a turnkey solution for integrating chat into a site where those site users can interact directly with each other, the Meebo bar enabled a community feel within any integrated destination site. The upgrade to this aspect of Meebo is the ability to pull all your chat buddies into your buddy list, regardless of which partner site you’re using to access Meebo. In short, any partner site with Meebo chat integration now supports all your chat buddies across the supported chat clients. As you may well know, these supported chat clients include AOL, Yahoo, Gchat, Facebook, and more. The purpose of this particular upgrade is actually twofold; it not only brings a more comprehensive chat option to end users for seamless access to all their buddies, but it provides an easier and more direct way of sharing web content. To that end, another upgrade to Meebo is the sharing option, which allows users to share content from their current web page across chat, email, Facebook and Twitter. What we’re looking at here is a combining of direct media-sharing via chat with social web redistribution of content. It’s the publishers that largely benefit from the new upgrades, as incorporating this type of Meebo integration means they’re providing a seamless way for users to chat and share their own web content. While chat has long been used for sharing media, especially links, Meebo is looking to up the ante by making it even easier to chat and share media in a very immediate sense. During testing Meebo found that sharing a link via chat led to an average of 50 new chat messages in response, and its this traffic participating site publishers is hoping to tap into. Such traffic helps with their SEO, and provides yet another way in which end users can redistribute their content across the web. Meebo has also created a dashboard for participating publishers, so they can see various metrics surrounding the sharing of their web content within the Meebo chat tool. Since the Meebo Bar provides a seamless chat option across sites and chat clients now, Meebo is really hoping that this approach will encourage users to share web content since they no longer have to search for a share option on the site itself, or rely on a browser bookmarklet that is only available on their computer. In this manner, Meebo is centralizing chat as a multifaceted interactive tool for communication on the social web. As far as its potential for advertising goes, Meebo likely has plans for later on down the line. With Meebo’s other tools such as Meebo Rooms, the company has already established its own ad network and has found several ways in which to monetize a brand’s ability to target Meebo users.

Offerpal Media Teams with IMVU for More Social Ads Posted: 09 Jun 2009 06:37 AM PDT Offerpal Media has teamed up with virtual social network IMVU to offer another monetization option within the virtual goods realm. With the partnership, Offerpal will extend another way for IMVU users to earn credits, which are used as currency for the virtual world. As Offerpal Media has created a platform specifically for social networks, applications, games and virtual worlds with offer-based options extended to users, the partnership between these two companies seems as though it will be mutually beneficial to both parties. The partnership comes weeks after Offerpal Media received $15 million in funding to grow its social ads model. IMVU already has a large user base, with virtual goods being at the center of its social network. With a reported 35 million registered users and a catalog of virtual items to be purchased and exchanged, IMVU is well established i its own virtual economy. At this point, we’re finding that virtual-based networks and other social networks are seeking deeper integration with other forms of revenue-generation to expand the earning potential of their virtual economy. To that end, incorporating ads into virtual economies has been a growing trend for virtual world networks and various types of social media applications, even if they’re not based on virtual worlds. With Offerpal Media in particular, the targeting methods for IMVU users is part of this deeper integration, taking advantage of in-world activity for the purpose of creating a relevant exchange of offers for virtual credits. For IMVU, this presents an opportunity for the virtual world to increase its revenue without having to increase its virtual inventory. Teaming with Offerpal presents more options to users for earning credits with little work on IMVU’s end. Super Rewards has been expanding a similar monetization platform in recent months, giving developers and site owners more control over the targeting methods extended to users. And another social network hi5 has been steadily adding to its virtual offerings as well, layering in games and partnering with PlaySpan for a virtual goods monetization platform itself. What we’re seeing is a diversification of ways in which users can earn credits as opposed to directly buying them, as well as a broadening of ways in which social networks and virtual economies can create revenue. While it’s less dependent on direct ads and direct sales for network owners, it’s yet another form of advertising that’s geared towards users. To this end, targeting is important and only increases the incentive potential for end users.

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