| Meez | |
| Commercial: | No |
| Type: | Avatar |
| Registration: | Required |
| Headquarters: | San Francisco, California[1] |
| Owner: | Donnerwood Media |
| Key People: | Sean Ryan (founder) |
| Launch Date: | March 28, 2006 |
| Dissolved: | December 2017 |
| Current Status: | Defunct |
| Url: | www.meez.com |
Meez was a free-to-play virtual world[2] that launched on March 28, 2006. Meez was developed by Donnerwood Media (a company based in San Francisco, California, that were also the license-holders for Tringo) as an "online entertainment" social networking service. It was founded by Sean Ryan,[3] the former vice president of the music service RealNetworks. Meez's CEO, John Cahill, was a former Yahoo executive.
Meez's main draw was the Meez Nation, where users could visit several regions, known as "Hoods", to chat with other users in chat rooms.[4] Meez had over three million unique users, who would spend 60 hours a month on the site. There were 13 million registered Meez users by the time the site had become discontinued, 90% of whom were in the United States.[5] Meez advertisers included Nike, Rocawear, Domo, Coast, the NBA and the NHL.[6] MIS Quarterly estimated that its users were primarily children and teenagers.
In 2007, Meez was named one of the Internet's five worst websites by TIME.[7]
Meez went offline in December 2017,[8] with no warning to its users, and its site domain later expired in March 2018. Donnerwood Media has not given any statements about how or why Meez was taken offline.