While I agree that all of these ideas have been thought of prior to the Asian chat apps, it's largely the similarity in execution that FB Messenger is taking compared to WeChat/ Line/KakaoTalk that the parent is talking about.
One important thing that the Asian messengers have executed better than the others is monetization of IM, something which has eluded Western messengers for a long time. To this day, FB still doesn't charge $$ for its stickers. Meanwhile, Line reported earnings of $600M+ and WeChat $900M+ from stickers/games/ads last year [1]. I think that's what has FB's attention.
Yahoo tried monetization for their desktop products (IIRC they had some sort of animated stickers that cost money) but the payment story just wasn't there back then.
YIM really did try to monetize, they just failed.
I also remember MSN messenger trying to monetize VOIP ala Skype but failing. NAT has just been introduced and traversal techniques where half baked, so getting VOIP to work at all was mostly failure. Indeed the primary reason I used YIM was because its voice chat worked.
Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a good history of what the various IM platforms offered over time, so finding references is hard. :(
BTW: Meebo rocked! I am still annoyed that I have no proper multi-protocol IM program. I've lost contact with people I had been in touch with for over a decade. :( Meebo was the first time I realized that Web Apps could be a Good Thing.
Unfortunately with Meebo's closure I also learned the down side of Web Apps.
Y! Messenger monetized branded themes. National advertisers would pay for the experiences, users got to pick from branded backgrounds and emoticons. Chris Szeto, then Y! Messenger head, pioneered this revenue model. It was quite lucrative but then WebIM became a thing (a la Meebo) and the market shifted away from Desktop downloads. FF a few more years and we see Mobile eat WebIMs lunch. The cycle continues...
Thanks for the kind words about Meebo! I miss it a lot as well, particularly the people. P)
Here just to say I am also a former meebo user who liked the experience. I used it till it was no more.
That time was a sort of golden age for text chat. We could have all services unified and easy to use from one single place. Now it is all messed up.
Line reported earnings of $600M+ and WeChat $900M+ from stickers/games/ads last year
And yet people still think $19B for WhatsApp was ridiculously overpriced. WhatsApp had roughly double the number of monthly active users compared to WeChat back when they last released comparable numbers[1].
One important thing that the Asian messengers have executed better than the others is monetization of IM, something which has eluded Western messengers for a long time. To this day, FB still doesn't charge $$ for its stickers. Meanwhile, Line reported earnings of $600M+ and WeChat $900M+ from stickers/games/ads last year [1]. I think that's what has FB's attention.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/technology/personaltech/me...
Disclaimer: Former Meebo engineer