Stop chatting! Facebook shuts up IM integration with Meebo

January 8, 2009 | Eric Eldon

Instant message aggregator Meebo integrated MySpace’s and Facebook’s chat services last month. It let Meebo users chat with friends on either network from within its own site. Now Facebook is making Meebo turn its connection off, at least until the integration complies with Facebook’s terms.

Facebook has typically wanted close control over what third parties do with its user data, though that doesn’t appear to be the issue here. Instead, it’s apparently a security issue involving third-party software that Meebo used to implement Facebook chat. Both MySpace and Facebook offer their own chat services that turn your friends on the sites into IM contacts. While MySpace and Meebo worked together on this new feature, Meebo figured out how to integrate with Facebook’s IM protocol by itself. It didn’t work with Facebook beforehand.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has restricted a third-party that accessed its user data without its permission, though in this instance the issue isn’t data. Most recently, Facebook sued Power.com, a social network aggregator, because the site collected Facebook usernames and passwords among other things. That suit may be wrapping up. A year ago, social contact manager Plaxo scraped Facebook for emails — and got shut down. Even Google attempted to collect Facebook user data last spring for a service called Friend Connect, then suffered a takedown.

But as I wrote last month, there is some precedent for Facebook to not shut this chat service down.

So maybe Facebook will cut off Meebo from accessing its IM service? Or maybe not. Social.IM, a startup recently acquired by iSkoot, has already integrated Facebook IM together with other IM services in a desktop app — and it’s still functional. Social.IM’s service has you login directly to Facebook, and it doesn’t store your Facebook data. Desktop IM aggregator Adium and Meebo rival eBuddy’s mobile service also includes Facebook chat integration.

The Meebo company statement below, indicates that Facebook may be returning to Meebo at some point.

Hi Meebo,

Got some bad news. :(

As a bunch of you already know (because you’ve been using it), we recently added Facebook Chat into Meebo.

We have been speaking to the Facebook team, and it turns out, they’d like us to connect to their network in a different way. In the interim, they asked us take Facebook off Meebo, and we said “okay.”

However, we were glad to hear that the Facebook team was genuinely excited to see their network on Meebo, especially since they already have plans to open Facebook Chat. They also committed resources from their Chat and Facebook Connect teams to do extra work with us to get Facebook Chat back on Meebo “really, really soon.”

Work began this week, so stay tuned. We expect some all nighters on both sides!

Seth

P.S. Meebo grew in December. We reached close to 45 million people, a new record, including 2.5 million via Meebo Community IM. So it’s not all bad news… :)

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He writes and edits stories about lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a now-failed startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers.

  • DBS
    Perhaps Facebook should concentrate on making its chat less crappy, by adding standard features such as blocking certain users, saving past conversations after a user logs out, and an invisible mode.
  • Hail to the Thieves

    So interesting that a short time ago Microsoft (A closed source company) wanted to push forward a standard (Passport) that would have given users the ability to have one log in that worked for many sites. At the time many in the tech and development community saw this as just another Microsoft Land Grab for our Identity and our Content. Many people saw Passport as a Microsoft effort to finally gain control of the internet by becoming the standard for digital identity.

    Today we have no less than 3 closed source companies in a race to become the "Standard" for holding our Identity and therefore having access to the content that we read and the content that we creates.

    All of this at a time when there are many Open Source standards that could be used (Openid is just one that comes to mind) that if properly deployed would do the right thing by putting the user/member in charge of their log in as well as their relationships across many sites.

    Have we forgotten the lesson of the not so distance past ?

    Why do we not see a problem with the big 3 trying to become the proprietary standard in this very important area ?

    Why do developers especially Open Source developers continue to build and extend applications for closed source companies that under mind open source standards and ideals ?

    Why do users continue to view giving control of their identity and content to these companies as a win, when in fact the win is clearly on the side of the company that you have allowed to take control of your identity and to generate value and revenue from your content. In return for our compliance we do not even have a right to take our identity and our content where we want.

    At adelph.us we believe in members freedom to control their accounts, and their content. Unlike Facebook we also believe that any revenue model should always put the members in the equation first. We believe in the Open Source community and ideals. We know we are not the smartest guys in the room and trust our community of members and developers.

    Break the chains of the old web 2.0 share cropping model. Do not give your content or your software development work to closed source old world companies they only seek to profit from r identity,relationships, content,or code
  • charitygolf
    Never forget that MySpace and Facebook are fierce competitors and with recent news showing that Facebook is beating MySpace in new users, it is about to get ugly.

    I don't blame Facebook at all for asking 3rd part developers to conform to a different standard of protocols, after all the 3rd party is generating its revenue from Facebook users.
    Just my 2 cents
    Andrew Brinkworth
    Miami Auto Insurance
    Charity Golf
  • panicawayreview
    I fully understand facebook's position. they have a brand and they want these sites to abide by it. so facebook isn't perfect in any way, but we should respect their decisions about their site.
  • Meebo seems to have lost it's sizzle. i used to use it but with all the others, it's just a back seat now.
  • sarahtaylor
    I fully understand facebook's position. they have a brand and they want these sites to abide by it. so facebook isn't perfect in any way, but we should respect their decisions about their site.

    Resveratrol
  • Well, I can understand that Facebook wants things their way, but Meebo is a great program. It's also VERY popular among certain groups of people. Facebook needs to remember those things.


    Angela from Aberdeen

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