meebo Launches "meebo rooms, Partner Edition" to Connect People Live on Major Media and Entertainment Sites and Social Networks

Business Wire,  June 28, 2007  

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Company collaborates with 20 music industry partners to power live community across the Web

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- meebo, a website for instant messaging (IM), today announced a partner-friendly version of recently-launched meebo rooms. meebo rooms are places where people can chat and view media live with IM buddies, both inside meebo.com and across the Web on their own sites. Since launching meebo rooms on May 15, over seventy-five thousand rooms have been created by meebo users and partners. meebo rooms, Partner Edition, adds extra functionality to meet the requirements of highly-trafficked and feature-rich sites.

First to adopt this new functionality are the music industry communities of Amie Street, BuddyLube, Capitol Records, Columbia Records, Fearless Records, Flyer Records, Hollywood Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, iSound, Jive Records, MOG, Nettwerk Music Group, Radio One, Inc., RockYou, The Hype Machine, Universal Motown/Universal Republic, VH1, VIBE Magazine, Vice Magazine's VBS.tv, and Virgin Records. Artists involved in the launch include A Fine Frenzy, Aly and Aj, Alpha Rev, HellYeah, Jason Fox, Jenny Owen Youngs, Kelly Rowland, Korn, Lil Mama, Matt Wertz, MIMS, Mudvayne, Portugal the Man, Saosin, Straylight Run and T-Pain. Other artists' rooms will be built in the coming weeks.

"At meebo, our mission is to connect people live across the Web," said Martin Green, VP of Business, meebo. "With the partner edition of rooms, sites can use meebo to build fan loyalty, increase their audience and grow their business."

Chat is back

VH1's WorldOfPop.com will go live with meebo rooms, Partner Edition, on July 9th to coincide with the debut of the channel's new season of the "2007 World Series of Pop Culture." At WorldOfPop.com, registered users can choose to join a meebo room while watching VH1 content (in between bouts of pop culture trivia and other grueling games).

Over the next several weeks, top media companies and social networks will embed meebo rooms, Partner Edition, into their websites to enhance live engagement with their audiences. All embedded meebo rooms additionally provide brands and content providers with a unique opportunity to distribute content and branding, instantly, to the over one million people that log into meebo every day.

"We're incredibly excited about enabling our community with chat functionality," said David Hyman, CEO and founder, MOG. "I believe it will take MOG closer to its goal of bridging relationships between people through music tastes and enabling music discovery in the process. Visit mog.com/chat and start chatting today."

meebo rooms for artist pages

In conjunction with this announcement, meebo is joining forces with 9 major record labels, including Capitol Records, Columbia Records, Fearless Records, Flyer Records, Island Def Jam Music Group, Jive Records, Nettwerk Music Group, Universal Motown/Universal Republic, and Virgin Records to connect fans live in seamless conversation on artists' official pages, Myspace profiles, and on personal pages, embedded by fans.

meebo will be working with Columbia Records to promote Kelly Rowland's upcoming album, Ms. Kelly, which will be released on July 3, 2007. Visitors on official sites dedicated to Kelly including KellyRowland.com, Myspace.com/KellyRowland, as well as at meebo.com/room/KellyRowland will be able to participate in a live conversation about the music from her new album.

On June 5, 2007, T-Pain, a Jive Records artist, promoted his highly-anticipated sophomore release, Epiphany, on meebo rooms in an unprecedented fashion. The Tallahassee, Florida-born rapper directed fans on his Myspace page to visit rooms on meebo (set up by region) to preview his album in full. Eager fans chatted and sampled the album live in an interactive listening party format.

Partner Edition functionalities include:

* Brand customization and Flash skinning. Partner Edition gives brands full control of the look and feel of their meebo rooms to create a seamless user and design experience between your brand and meebo technology.

* Automated capacity spillover. Designed for highly-trafficked media sites and artist pages, new rooms spawn automatically when capacity is reached.

* Advertising tracking. Partners can seamlessly embed and track advertising in a room's media queue to monetize traffic inside meebo rooms.

* Traffic and data reporting. Partner Edition offers enhanced traffic and data reporting capability to measure campaign effectiveness and results.

* Integration with partners' existing registration system. Partner Edition authenticates logged user sessions and lets users take their registered names and buddy icons into the room with them, without requiring a meebo account.

For more information on meebo rooms, Partner Edition, please visit blog.meebo.com/partners.

About meebo Inc.

meebo is a website for instant messaging. Founded in September 2005, meebo continues to catch on with IMers across the globe. After announcing 500,000 user-accounts in October 2006, meebo has more than quadrupled its registered users to 2.3 million in just six months with more than six million unique people logging in monthly. More than 1 million meebo sessions are initiated daily with average sessions of 70 minutes. meebo's investors include Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Visit meebo.com today to connect with people live on the Web.