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Exclusive Peek At Meebo’s Upcoming Community ChatSeptember 18th, 2008 at 5:30 pmSource:TechCrunch In his first blog post, he explains the blog name: “Welcome to my personal blog. While Google is a play on googol, too is a play on the much smaller number - two. It also means “in addition”, as this blog reflects my life outside of work.” In the second blog post, he gets a little more serious. He talks about how DNA startup 23andMe (cofounded by his wife Anne Wojcicki) has shown he has certain gene mutation that is tied to Parkinson’s Disease - G2019S. While the mutation is rare in people with Parksinson’s, in some ethnic groups it accounts for a substantial proportion of familial Parkinson’s. In other words, if you have it, there’s a good chance you’ll get Parkinson’s. He says based on current available data he’s 20%-80% likely to get the disease. And he can now do something about it:Source:TechCrunch Some new panelists joining me will be: • Shawn Colo, cofounder of Demand Media Instant messaging service Meebo has given us a demo of its upcoming “Community IM” platform, which allows websites to seamlessly integrate a browser-based chat window very similar to Facebook Chat. Meebo announced the upcoming community chat feature last July, with initial partners including DanceJam, myYearbook, AddictingGames, Sugar Publishing and Tagged. Flixster will be the first partner to launch the service, with an expected release in mid-October, with more services launching in the coming months. The video below shows Meebo’s Community IM integrated into Flickr, which isn’t actually one of Meebo’s current partners (though an alliance may form in the future). The project was constructed as a proof-of-concept during last week’s Yahoo Hack Day, and was awarded second place in the event’s Flickr competition. |
Next week is our MeetUp in Austin, Texas, but before we party we are going to tackle the issue of how to use the Web to build grassroots support for a business, a cause, or a political candidate. Everyone loves to give lip service to grassroots campaigns, but do they really scale? When do they work and when is it best to use traditional mass marketing and outreach? To help answer these questions, we’ve put together with 
