Imo.im Tries to Turn Instant Messaging Utility Into Instant Social Discovery Network (Video)

Liz Gannes — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:37:37 +0000

Mobile messaging apps are so hot right now. Imo.im was both ahead of that trend and continues to ride it out. After launching on the Web five years ago to help people manage all their instant messenger accounts, Imo added synchronized mobile apps and group messaging features, and now is extending into social discovery features to help users meet new people.

Ralph and Georges Harik of Imo

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is led by Georges and Ralph Harik — Georges was one of the first 10 employees at Google, and left way back in 2007; Ralph is his younger brother (by eight years) and the Imo CEO. Georges invested $10 million in Imo’s Series A funding. (They pronounce it “eye-mo.”)

The brothers told me that seven million people have used their service in the past 12 months. On a daily basis they have 600,000 users sending a total of 45 million messages through MSN, Skype, Facebook, Google Talk and other networks. Half of their usage is online and half is through their mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Nokia.

Though apples-to-apples usage stats can be hard to find, Imo is considerably smaller than some other mobile messaging apps — for instance, WhatsApp has said it delivers more than 2 billion messages per day.

But beyond the basic utility of connecting people across IM networks, Imo is experimenting with becoming a social discovery platform. Georges said he owes his career to a woman at the University of Illinois computer lab who told him in 1993 he should really check out this Web thing, and to an out-of-the-blue email from a friend of a friend in 1999 that introduced him to Larry Page. He wants to help create that sort of serendipity online.

Inviting strangers to instant message you sounds like a recipe for abuse, but the Hariks have some interesting ideas about how to help users meet each other without turning Imo into a “troll haven,” as Georges put it. What they’ve designed is kind of like a real-time Quora.

Imo users can publicly post topics they’d like to discuss in a “Meet New People” section. Each person is basically a discussion thread that others can jump into. There’s a bit of an internal economy, where users’ posts rank higher when they share more about themselves publicly. Imo conversations aren’t indexed by Google, and they “expire” after a few days.

“Our real purpose is to discover connections between people, not necessarily to get questions answered,” Georges said.

In early testing, 65,000 Imo users have tried the Web-based “Meet New People” feature.

Imo has 17 employees and will likely soon raise additional funding, Georges said. The company has experimented with selling apps and advertising, but hasn’t made any significant revenue yet.

Here’s a video interview with Ralph and Georges:

[ See post to watch video ]

lonelygirl15 Is Dead–Long Live EQAL!?!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:56:15 +0000

Last Friday, what BoomTown would call the Web’s first bona fide hit ended, as the lonelygirl15 online series finale took place with 12 video segments uploaded over 12 hours.

Now, apparently, it is time to meet EQAL, a “social entertainment company” that is still essentially the two guys–Greg Goodfried and Miles Beckett (pictured here. left to right)–who dreamed up LG15 and also the KateModern Web series.

Except, rather than operating out of their homes on a wing and a prayer, they are now armed with $5 million in funding.

That investment in the Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based start-up, which was announced in April, included some true Silicon Valley luminaries, such as entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, investor Ron Conway and former Googler Georges Harik, as well as Conrad Riggs and Spark Capital.

Sources also said Google’s (GOOG) Marissa Mayer is one of the new investors in EQAL.

With its small pile of cash, Beckett and Goodfried are planning new online shows–one of which will debut in September–as well as a number of other things, in yet another attempt to create a successful mesh between Hollywood and technology and thus yield a lucrative and lasting interactive hit.

If anyone can give it a try, it would be this pair, which unleashed LG15 upon the unsuspecting Web population in mid-2006.

Unsuspecting, largely because most people at first thought the user-generated-looking online video of the incessant jabbering of its attractive female lead right into a computer’s camera was real.

Instead, it was actually the “story of a group of young adults fighting against an evil secret society, the Order, that uses the blood of girls with a rare blood trait to extend the lives of a small group of Elders.”

And they also used Neutrogena products while doing it! (The skin care company was an early sponsor, and a scientist from Neutrogena was also written into the story.)

So with clean faces and over the course of its two-year run, LG15 ran to more than 550 episodes with 100 million views.

Beckett and Goodfried also launched KateModern on the Bebo social network in the U.K. a year ago, which also just concluded.

The “story of a group of British young adults investigating a creepy, New Age religion called ‘The Hymn of One’ that is actually a front for the Order” garnered 50 million views.

Well, it’s all disorder now, as EQAL tries to keep the hits coming without LG15, by working with writers, producers, media companies and advertisers to create new interactive shows that also have engaged online communities.

EQAL’s motto: “The Show Is Everywhere.”

Well, we’ll see, but here are Beckett and Goodfried–the former was a physician and the latter a lawyer in their previous lives–giving me a tour of their new office in Los Angeles’s “Valley,” and also sitting for a longish video interview about where content online is going.

That’s a question a lot of people in both Hollywood and Silicon Valley hope they can answer.

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

AllThingsD » Georges Harik

Imo.im Tries to Turn Instant Messaging Utility Into Instant Social Discovery Network (Video)

lonelygirl15 Is Dead–Long Live EQAL!?!