Today Meebo makes a large bet to reinvent advertising on IM, by secured partnership with VideoEgg and enabling the latter to power Ads served through Meebo platform application developers. According to VideoEgg, the partnership brings VideoEgg’s Eggnetwork Advertising Platform to developers building synchronous and multiuser applications for the Meebo Platform, in addition to let developers monetize from their applications. This approach will let the developers a cut of the Ads click through revenue, Meebo will have a share as well. Ultimately, what’s important is developers get opt-out opportunities, which mean Meebo allowed developers to opt out of the revenue-sharing arrangement and run their own ads on their application. Nevertheless, Meebo and VieoEgg have both tried to make their advertising efforts as unobtrusive and appealing to the Meebo users with good intentions. Meebo has been very successful as one million IMers spend more than two-and-a-half hours on Meebo every day. It make sense that they’ll launch this advertising initiative at this stage.

Since the October 30 platform launch, it can be viewed as a fundamental departure from all other same kind of IMs. Firstly Meebo allowed game developers to develop games for the platform, and there are more than 40 applications currently available to Meebo users, with a lot more coming up since more than 200 developers have registered their applications for the Meebo platform.

Meebo is a website for instant messaging. Founded in September 2005, has recently secured partnership with Joost, and released a version that compatible with Phone, as well as release the extension for Firefox browser.

Yahoo! has released a new service called myM. It is an invite-only private beta service, but when Yahoo! released a new product to the market, it will bring some amount of stir. It might acted as an IM interoperability service that allowed users to social network with their friends. A vexed question, how robust the business model is this product, as there are countless social networking services available in the market? However, one thing for sure, Yahoo! is aimed to become the king of Web 2.0 since they’re the one who owned few successful social networking sites, such as Yahoo! 360, Yahoo! Groups, Flickr, Rivals.com, and etc.

This new service is first came courtesy of ValleyWag, as they claimed that it works similar to Meebo, which allows users to aggregate multiple IM clients into one, and proposed to usher the next-generation of IM and social networking aggregator, and this allows users to communicate among Yahoo! IM, MSN, AIM, and Meebo. Moreover, cross communication across social networking sites such as Friendster, MySpace, and blogging service which is LiveJournal is also available.

Though the features proposed sounds very good, the general thinking is that too many similar services available in the market will likely pose a significant impediment to the future reception of myM. For all the new products (in private beta) developed by Yahoo!, I always remain worry that the buzz is running far ahead of the products.

The other day I came across a new gaming site that called QQ Games. It is also designed as an official plugin for the AIM users to play games with their buddies online. In order to play the games that offered by QQ Games, one must become an AIM user and download the plugin that weight in at 11.8MB. The platform this QQ Games supports at this moment is Windows. In the meantime, the games available include Treasure Hunter, Robo, Match Master, Black Jack, and Pool. According to the statistical data compiled from Quantcast, QQ Games has attracted more than 160,000 monthly uniques barely in the US.

QQ, a strong domestic brand name in China when people come to using the instant messaging service. On the other hand, AIM is AOL’s instant messenger (IM), both have laid a strong foundation involving the Web startups based on the IM platform. The creation of QQ Games plugin is a great example of how a China company works with an American firm and provides a good case for the Chinese entrepreneur that was pondering how to go on from what has already been achieve in China and replicate the success in the US market.

The other day I came across a new micro-blogging service called chittR that founded in India. It was just launched in Alpha from a stealth mode, and a bit disappointed I did not found any detail on whom created this startup. However, as seen on the landing page, no one can argue that they’re not following the Twitter business model, therefore users that sign-up are allowed to send updates via IM or through the Web. It is a Twitter-like service that based on Adobe’s Flex 2. Therefore, if you click on any button, a Flash dialog box will appear in front of the page and loading of page for seconds is expected. For every user, once you sign-up, you’re allowed to post your update for a maximum 140 character per message, they preferred the word, chittRbox. On chittR, you also allowed to invite your buddies, following your friends’ updates, reply an update, post update restricted to your followers, find message through a system of tags, etc. What different from them with Twitter is Twitter was using “what am I doing” that drive the momentum of users in posting the updates, they distinguish with “What are YOU thinking ??”

Currently, they had less than 200 alpha testers, i.e. chittR-ers, many of whom signed up by the month of August. I feel it’s still too early to conclude its actual business model, given the immature of their technology, process and practice. I will report back on this startup when they officially launched in beta, stay tuned.

TokBox has raised $4 million from a renowned venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and some high-profile angel investors, among them is Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube. When a startup received funding from Sequoia Capital, due to the Sequoia Capital’s unique ability in evaluate a new startup, people normally recognized that the startup might well meet the users’ needs and succeed in the market. In fact, this startup has created massive buzz recently and The New York Times reported that Sequoia Capital is investing $4 million in TokBox in an effort to make the site the Web’s next big communication tool.

TokBox is a free chat video chat service, and its main use is to let users to conduct video communication in an easy way without much hassle, and thus no registration or download of their client software, installation or configuration needed in order to use TokBox. Users can use TokBox via a Web browser or through a module embed onto their blogs or social networking sites. Moreover, a single click on the start button can start the video communication through a Flash interface. Though it is still in testing phase, video chat is currently a little bit noisier, their system will be improved when they successfully integrate the TokBox with Adobe Flash Player 9 in the near future.

My sense is that TokBox is pursuing the strategy of “get big fast.” I believed they will use the fund they raised to acquire more users and develop better technology. In the technology settings, this kind of product can’t prove to the users that they’re a “not me-too” product on the Web as there are a lot of players are now offering the similar video chat tools. Imaging the degree of Windows Live users that live chat with their friends with a Web cam on a regular basis, will they switch to this product? However, with the strength of TokBox’s backers, I started to think that if they’re investing in something, it will works, then the real question to this startup is, what is the actual product concept they’re selling, and are the investors looking for the short-term profitability or the long-term profitability of this startup.

Google continue its shopping spree by acquiring Jaiku for an undisclosed sum. It has been confirmed on the official blog entry that posted onto the Jaiku blog. From the Jaiku Q &A page:

Q: Why did Google acquire Jaiku?

A: Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users. Jaiku’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teams.

It answered that Google’s Jaiku buy will boost its text advertisement appeal. Are we going to see the text advertisement appear on the Jaiku users’ IM account? We shall know the answer soon. While I am an existing user for both Jaiku and Twitter, I still prefer Twitter despite the fact that Twitter shows an out-of-service bird occasionally. As a result of my preference, I’ve removed the Jaiku widget from this blog.

Nevertheless, congrats to the Helsinki, Finland Jaiku team.

The other day I came across a new Web messenger called Imo.im. It was known to be founded and funded by one of the first ten Google employees. This startup Imo.im was currently focused on instant messenger (IM) service that provides a single login for four (4) different IMs, which are AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, and Google Talk. In fact, it initially released on the Web since this April, and since then, attract some loyal users that loved the group chat feature that they provided. According to them, this feature enables their users to chat with their buddies without their buddies having to log into Imo.im.

Imo.im is based in Palo Alto, California. I will report on this startup when its service goes beta phase in the future. Stay tuned.

Baidu, the No.1 search engine in the Chinese market will release its own instant messenger (IM) software. At the moment, the baidu.im was redirect to Google home page, and I wonder what will be the subdomain of Baidu going to use for this new IM software. From the recent buzz on the Web, Baidu will release this IM software together with its email application as their major product plan of this 2007. In particular, Baidu IM can be download as a client version, its size of beta release is about 4MB, features such as voicemail, online chat are available in this client.

Though QQ IM services is well-known in the China market, that hasn’t stopped Baidu from offering its own “IM” services. But I think it will be an interested application for the Chinese people in China, Baidu brand name is there, and search engine, email system, and this IM are the products that China people want. If Baidu bundle these IM and email application with their search engine, they will build a solid empire in a long, long time. Then, we should forget about Google and Yahoo! in China.

I will report back on this Baidu IM when it officially launched in the market. Stay tuned.