Meegos are cool!

On By Dan WalmsleyIn General

At least, they’re trying desperately to be cool. The latest cartoony gimmick integrated into MSN Messenger in Australia is doomed to certain failure for one simple reason: they don’t appear in the MSN main window at its default size. Observe:

MSN - meego nowhere

Merry game of spot the meegos anyone? Their tab is off the bottom of the screen.

Anyway, my point wasn’t how stupid the GUI and marketing people involved with Messenger are. Lord knows that topic deserves a blog of its own. I went to the Meegos site, and it seems that their strategy to make money is to charge you to create little cartoony pictures of yourself with their unresponsive and artistically restrictive interface. But even that’s not the stupidest thing. The stupidest thing is, they PROVIDE YOU WITH A REALTIME PREVIEW OF THE PICTURE. Okay, so it’s got a couple of stripes through it… all we need to do is make the blue stripes cool!

So, without further ado, let’s start making the blue stripes cool.

I'm the monkey

Of course, their home page also provides you with a real-time preview of all the clothes too, so anyone who’s handy with a paint tool can make their own meegos from the artwork on the site.

WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?

Now someone will go and prove me wrong by telling me how many schmucks have actually bought these things.

86 thoughts on “Meegos are cool!”

  1. Yes my friend you are a smuck…. 1/. how does this not fit in a messenger window? funny how people with no job but to knock everyone else think that they have authority in many topics that are internet related… My learned friend, the Meegos product is being rolled out into Australia, New Zealand all of Asia and Europe with msn messenger…so someone thinks its a good idea and they obviously have more say in matters of importance than you.. oh and yes in 3 months there are over 100,000 memebrs to Meegos… so its not only microsoft that dont agree with the stuff you write at your pc in your pj’s, its the target demographic…. any more advice champ?

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  2. if you new anything about the workings of messenger you would know that the tabs get rotated every month…the month before the meegos tab was at the top and next month my bet is it will be in the middle of the page…

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  3. Chrissay

    I reckon their stupid they’re website got stuffed so that U can only see half the paage & you cant click on anything !!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m not sure if that problem is ffixed now but I hate meego

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  4. go check out meegos.ninemsn.com they have just launched a Superheroes range and it is AWESOME… they also launched in France the other day on MSN.fr and over 14,000 people joined day 1. hhmmm a person every 9 seconds… you are correct it will never work.. apparently…. will keep you posted on the Meegos progess

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  6. Meego, what I love most about your posts is not how much they resemble paid MSN propaganda, but how utterly backwards your arguments are.

    You claim I have no authority to criticise meegos because I don’t know anything about them, yet incorrectly assert that I have no job and that I wrote that post in my PJs.

    You also claim that I knock everything else. I praise plenty of things, I just knock stuff that I happen to think is a complete waste of time and money, or shameless exploitation etc. And the idea that just because someone has say-so means that everything they do is a good idea is not just logically wrong, it’s downright dangerous! To take some extreme examples:

    – Hitler thought invading the rest of Europe was a good idea, and had the say-so to authorise it.
    – Microsoft thought Microsoft Bob was a good idea (and invested millions of dollars in it), and it’s universally laughed at as one of the worst ideas ever.

    Okay, so the tabs in messenger are rotated every month. And how is that not a workaround for an utterly farcical design flaw? YOU CAN’T SCROLL THE WINDOW TO SEE THE MISSING TABS! You have to resize it. Do you have any idea how many users of Microsoft Windows simply don’t know how to resize a window? Trust me – and I’ve been working in IT support for many years (yes, I _do_ have a job) – A LOT.

    Meegos is, IMNSHO, destined for a laughable failure. You cannot sell something that has no intrinsic value, and in a marketplace such as the internet – where meego-type characters are available for free from a thousand bored graphic design students’ websites – people will quickly catch on and forget that you were ever able to create boring, samey cartoons in some ninemsn backwater.

    I mean, duh!

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  8. Meego, dude, I’m not saying that everything on the internet has to be free. When did I even _imply_ that? I’m just saying that Meegos.com produces nothing of value. My comments pertain to Meegos and their utter, utter lameness, not to anything else on the web. I think Amazon.com sells a lot of great books. Now, if they just tried to sell pictures of the covers so you could put it on your web site, I’d think that was insufferably lame.

    I wasn’t saying that meegos.com should give away their content for free – that’s up to you, er, I mean them – I was saying that their service offers nothing that you can’t get for free elsewhere.

    See my point?

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  9. Ok, this is just awesome, just AWESOME. I was browsing the logs and saw that Dave had just posted – hi Dave!

    a) meego just confirmed that he’s Dave Heysen (or someone who knows him) by posting a link bragging about how he sold Soulmates for $23 million
    b) Someone who just made $23 million still finds it necessary to brag about it on a blog noone reads – self esteem issues Dave?
    c) I never said Soulmates / match.com went nowhere – I _knew_ it was sold for a packet. I still contend that TVMates was a dismal flop, considering the anecdotal evidence that http://www.tvmates.com is a spam site, and nothing’s been mentioned of it since the trial press release circa 2000.
    d) You’re still pretending to be “meegos”? Give it up, dude!

    This is so going on the front page.

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  12. Sam – I understand that, but if something isn’t visible at the default size, there’s a much lower likelihood that the average user would notice that it’s there, let alone resize the window. As pointed out above, Microsoft rotate the tabs every month, so every product gets a chance to not be advertised properly.

    Kirst -there used to be a tool floating around for getting rid of the watermark, I don’t know what happened to it. I guess most people decided that meegos are pretty lame anyway (291 hits on Google? They might as well not exist), so they didn’t bother promoting the tool anymore.

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  14. pinklo – “brunette with blue eyes”? what exactly are you trying to say?
    Moocow – What was stopping you? Perhaps you are blind. If so, meegos aren’t for you – they’re pictures.

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  15. To Meegos Rock:
    Jeez, you would think that maybe, just maybe, the wonderful people of MSN and 3H Group would have BOARDED THE FUCKING CLUE-TRAIN AND REALISED I CAN SEE WHO YOU ARE WHEN YOU POST ON MY SITE. But noooo, here we go again, this time you’re posting from jetstream.xtra.co.nz, xtra being an MSN network that, wonder-of-wonders, just launched Meegos. Before all this started, I would have given such circumstantial evidence less credence, but since every positive comment about Meegos so far has provably come from a 3H Group employee, I’m no longer so trusting.

    As my friend Matt said in another comment, anyone who googles you, be they potential partners, employees, or customers, is now going to see yet another pathetic attempt at marketing your virtual non-product on my site. MY SITE.

    From the moment you called me a “smuck” (sic), you invited this trouble on yourself. Every time you fuck with my site, you only make it worse for yourselves. But instead of learning your lesson, you’ve created at least four identities, astroturfed my site, called me an idiot, a ‘smuck’, jobless, underdressed, and other names. And you’ve bragged about your personal fortune!

    Talk about needing to get a life. If I was an employee of 3H Group, I’d jump ship right about now – if they’re reduced to these sorts of actions, things must be really desperate.

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  16. Chrusiel,

    I know it must seem ludicrous, but for 3H Group this is not for the sake of a few pictures – this is their business. This is about marketing, money, and public perception. No one really cares about little cartoony pictures – that was my original point! – but people who’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in creating a new business that sells those pictures, they care a _lot_ about sites just like this one. Particularly when it comes time to gather investors for a new venture.

    My site is the first non-official hit on google when you search for 3hgroup or Meegos. Try to think of just _one_ person who doesn’t use Google for all their searching. I can’t.

    Imagine a company comes to you asking you to invest in their new venture. The first thing you do – the very first thing! – is find out about their previous ventures. 3hgroup have had just one venture – Meegos – and they’ve skewered their own public perception by engaging in guerilla marketing tactics on my blog, just because it has a high rank in the google search for Meegos.

    In the end, this has backfired on them quite spectacularly, and so it should. I’ve made it my hobby for the last couple of weeks to track activities on this site, and it has been _infinitely_ rewarding and educational. I’d like to thank Daniel Haigh and 3H Group for opening my eyes to the infinite stupidity of which dot-com throwbacks are capable.

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  17. I should mention at this point that Daniel Haigh is also involved with Kangasoft (http://www.kangasoft.com). Once can only assume that if that company is run as professionally as 3H Group, they create their clients’ sites by posting the html code to strangers’ blogs and then redirecting the URL there.

    One also wonders how they’re still in business, given that they’ve produced two web pages in almost four years (http://www.kangasoft.com/portfolio.cfm). And these are the best they’ve got? My friends at Uni in 1997 had slicker looking home pages than these on their free Uni accounts.

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  19. You need to pay for your meegos, msn had used very much money to make this project availible for the public! You have shown a stolen meego on you site as an example, wecan easy track you down.. pay for one now and display that one here please.. or else…

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  20. To Kirk Goblin.

    Oh my GOD! You’re ONTO ME! I thought I was perfectly safe posting my personal opinions on this web site which I OWN, whose name registration is under MY NAME AND BILLING ADDRESS. Why, only the most devious black hat hackers working for trillionaire Russian crime syndicates could figure out MY identity! Only they possess the mysical power of “whois.net”.

    Second, you’re saying that that just because MSN paid a lot of money for this project I should _respect_ them? That’s exactly why I _don’t_ respect them! It’s L-A-M-E.

    Third, I didn’t steal the Meego on my site. The Meego was part of a screenshot of the MSN Meegos site, which I was reviewing for editorial purposes. If MSN sues everyone who looks at their site and attempts to comment on it, then they’re not going to find a lot of people reviewing their site, are they? Plus, if I had a Meego _without_ blue lines, and hadn’t paid for it, _that_ would be stealing. This is the free one, ce?

    Finally, (FINALLY!), “or else”. I don’t even know where to start. But I’ll start here: You’re in fucking Oslo. OSLO. If you throw a snowball at me, it will melt by the time it gets here. I strongly doubt that you actually have anything to do with MSN, but just in case you do, please get back to me with a real threat within my legal jurisdiction and then I will take you seriously.

    Looking forward to it,
    Dan

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  21. Hey Anonymous – […] is a bracketed ellipsis – it means other parts of the pingback content have been omitted for brevity. Pingback is a system whereby links in blogs automatically notify the system hosting the target URL that there has been a comment on it.

    And the reason your Meego turned out crap is that they’re crap to begin with.

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  24. mm

    Oh this is funny! Ok yea meegos r pretty well pointless, a waste ov money etc etc! But hey they r makin them money,
    only coz well… ppl buy them, Its so temptin tho! they r so cute!! but i kant c the point! u kan go (and like dan) sed
    paint ur own thing that looks the same! its a pathetic way 2 get “Extra” money! but hey if it works! gr8! gud on
    who eva created up that idea… no matta hw gay it seems

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  25. “mm”… what the hell are you trying to say?

    I’m not saying Meegos should be free. I never said that at all. I’m just saying I don’t understand why anyone would pay for them. There’s a difference.

    and… are you _Prince_?

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  27. The Shoeless Hobo

    Meegos are cool, but they should also be free. I just screenshot the preview picture of the Meego I’m creating and there, I have a Meego (for free). ^.^

    Anyway, I just downloaded my (Stolen, if you’d like to say that) onto my phone.

    By the way, the adds at the bottom of MSN Messenger can be rotated by Right-Clicking them.

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  43. Agustina Diaz

    I can’t use the pege because it have an “HERROR”. I don’t know mhy hapeneed that
    Well, send me a e-meil…sand me nthe pege!!!!PLEASE!!!!!I NEED THAT!!!!
    THANKS FOR YOUR TIME
    AGUSTINA D.

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  73. Julia

    Hola.. para mi los meegos estan barabaros la cagada es que haya que pagarlos.. estan muy buenos se pueden parecer mucho a uno mismo a las estrellas de cine amigos familia ect.

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  74. hola soy mariano de argentina buenos aires don torcuato, y quiero un migoo please o un algo.
    los meegos estan muy buenos y ojlá que halla de animale, estrellas, superheroesen,familia, etc.
    chau saludos mariano julian te sarpastes con ese comentario a los meegos no te metas con ellos

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  75. Becky

    I think that meego’s are stupid and I agree with Dan that they are not worth your time or money. I do think that whoever came up with charging people for an animated cartoon is a genius. I do not think this because they are cool because meegos aren’t. The reason I have this opinion is because they are making a lot of money. If they have as many users as they say. Just think about it this person makes tons of money off of stupid cartoons. I only wish that I could come up with something this ridiculous.
    Oh and to comment if they should be free no, they shouldn’t because this person is selling their idea, and you shouldn’t be able to steal peoples ideas. If you came up with this idea and were making money off of it you wouldn’t want it to be free would you?

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  76. admin

    How absolutely extraordinary, Becky. I am blown away by your arguments – you clearly went to the George W. Bush School of Logic and Reason.

    Assuming that you aren’t a 3hgroup shill, let’s consider your arguments. Allow me to paraphrase:

    “Normal Meegos aren’t worth the time or money. Animated Meegos are genius, because they are making a lot of money. It is also genius because it’s ridiculous that they make that money.”

    You assume that they’re making a lot of money. You haven’t backed that up, so I have no idea if it’s true or not. But if they are, you’re right, it _is_ ridiculous. But then things get really interesting…

    “They shouldn’t be free because this person is selling their idea, and if you gave it away free it would be stealing.”

    Um… sorry to break it to you, but NOBODY owns the idea of an animation, and if I wanted to give away a bunch of animations tomorrow that I had created, I could, and it would be completely legal. I would not be stealing anything from anyone.

    Finally:

    “If you came up with this idea and were making money off it you wouldn’t want it to be free would you?”

    Actually, that would probably never happen to me, because I wouldn’t try to sell something that wasn’t of ANY REAL VALUE. Assuming I was, then if someone can create that item for virtually zero cost, I was never going to do well in that business anyway, was I? This is the same problem that Microsoft is having with Linux. It’s almost free to download and install, because it’s just a stream of bytes. Being forced to pay for widely distributed identical sets of information in the Internet age is quickly becoming an anachronism, because the costs of production per unit are tending towards zero.

    Go back to school, dolt.

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  78. I think Meegos are cool but I would never even consider buying one of them. to me they are worth nothing. but to some people, having a little cartoon that makes faces while you are talking is worth $3 or whatever it is. think about it; as far as I know there is not a “purpose” other than looking cool, for a necklace or braclet. The only reason people buy them is because they are ‘cool.’ in other words, they serve no purpose. same with meegos, It may be a worthless stupid Idea (I think it is) but if people think its worth there $3, let ’em buy ’em. as for me, I will never buy a meego.

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  79. admin

    Hey “Somebody Else” – how’s things in Becky’s subnet? Nice and cosy? Do you ever feel like she’s INSIDE YOUR MIND?

    Let me give you a counter example: If everyone was handing out free, custom-made bracelets on every corner, and you bought an inferior bracelet that was stamped out by a machine, you would look like a big, fat, hopeless douche.

    Sure, it may be worth $3 to some people, but those people are unimaginative twats and hopefully there’s as few of them in a world as possible.

    I think I’ve made myself clear.

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  80. NitroED

    Hehe, Kirk Goblin and ‘Meego’ you live in a fantasy world, there will always be 3lit3 h4ck3rs and c0d3rs to make the internet free, they cannot be stopped, there is always a work around.

    btw: i got 4 animated free meegos and the editor…

    kk thx bye no re.

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  81. Vicronwe

    well er, i am just passing by and looking at you guys talking about meegos and i think that er, it will actually worth the payment and all IF they allow meegos to interact with others and hmmm….. you can even customize your meego and fight with someone else bla bla thing yea? That would be nice no? Like a mini online game will be great.

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