MANILA, Philippines — In its attempt to fortify its social network offering Google+, search giant Google acquired social engagement platform Meebo for around $100 million, reports said Tuesday.
Meebo, which is popular for Meebo Messenger and its prolific Meebo Bar, will reportedly help Google expand its social network reach and make its products more social and engaging.
“For more than seven years we’ve been helping publishers find deeper relationships with their users and to make their sites more social and engaging,” the Meebo team announced on its blog.
Meebo pioneered a less-intrusive way for brands to reach consumers through its Meebo Bar, a small horizontal gadget found at the bottom of the Web page that encourages social sharing and provides more engaging content for users.
It is unknown what Google plans to do with Meebo and its products at the moment, although reports have indicated that most of the start-up’s team will be working on Google+.
Launched in July of last year, Google+ debuted to massive reception mainly by early technology adopters who were looking for respite from the convoluted offerings of its rival Facebook.
The search giant, however, has had difficulty following through with the momentum built by the rapid surge in user adoption, with publications deeming the social network as a “virtual ghost town” due to the low amount of activity on the site.
Google+ currently has some 100 million accounts, according to some reports. This is easily dwarfed by Facebook’s 900 million and Twitter’s almost 500 million.
In the past months, Google has been trying to drive attention to the site by hosting public hangouts — or basically, video conferencing — with famous personalities such as US President Barack Obama and football star David Beckham, among many others.
The technology giant is bent on breaking through with its social network project considering the recent debut of Facebook’s initial public offering, which is expected to hype up the competition in the social media space, as well as the attention of Internet users the world over.
