Meebo & Meebo Rooms
Meebo is a very popular web based IM client, and with its latest release, Meebo Rooms, it’s destined to become even bigger. It’s a completely web based chat space with embedded video and plenty of options, including bold and italic fonts and different typefaces. Most importantly, just like Meebo, it works solid and doesn’t get too many slowdowns and freezes which is a common illness for this type of programs.
Pibb
Compared to most of the competition, and depending on your attitude towards it, Pibb can either be called lightweight or featureless. Options are scarce, and besides creating your chat rooms and maintaining a list of friends there isn’t much you can do. It archives all the conversations, and uses OpenID, though, and that’s a definite plus.
Tangler
Tangler is actually an online forum, and it’s currently in beta. But, a forum with real time conversation is directly comparable with most web based chats, at least those that have archived conversations. Tangler’s look and feel is definitely more like a forum than a chat room, and many users will appreciate this. It also has more text editing options than most web based chat clients.
Lingr
Honestly, we don’t think that Lingr is going to go far, but it earns some points on simplicity. Choose a chat room from a tag cloud, and you’re chatting within seconds. Just have in mind that most of its rooms and conversations are Japanese.
Kool IM
Similar to Meebo, KoolIM aggregates multiple messengers on one page - AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ and Jabber. Unlike Meebo, though, it insists on conversation in a popup window, which might not appeal to everyone. Oh yeah, and for some reason we love their mascot. And, just like Meebo (since recently), it has ads.
Campfire
Although nominally based for business users, Campfire is chat just like any other. Its upsides are integration with Basecamp, archive of all conversations, easy file sharing and live image previews.
Yahoo! Messenger for the web
Noticing the trend of online chat moving to the web, Yahoo! recently introduced a web-based version of their chat client. It works in any browser, and it has full history, as well as a wide range of emoticons.
http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/
MessengerFX
Just like Yahoo!, Windows Live Messenger also has a web-based version, however, this one is not official and the authors aren’t affiliated with Microsoft. It has its occasional glitches but works quite fast. It also has quite a lot of ads scattered all over the place.
Iminent
Iminent combines real time conversation with video; a feat that might have seem strange back when we first saw it, but now it’s commonplace, since Meebo Rooms has it and YouTube is experimenting on a similar feature. But, Iminent works differently: it’s an addon for IM clients (MSN only at the moment) that lets you add videos to your chat. It also scores some points on combining emoticons with videos into EMOvids (don’t think skinny guys dressed in black with funny haircuts; think short videos that help you express your feelings).
eBuddy
One of the (supposedly) bigger fishes in this pond, eBuddy combines AIM, MSN messenger and Yahoo accounts in an Ajax interface. It has a number of weaknesses: it’s not supporting all standards, especially Jabber (Google Talk is based on Jabber), it opens a popup window for conversation, and it can be rather slow.
3bubbles
Unlike most other services in this list, which are standalone web based chat platforms, 3bubbles is meant to be used as a widget on blogs. As such, it has its usefulness, but the fact that it’s always dislocated over a number of sites doesn’t make it a direct competitor to other services in this roundup.
Tworl
With most of IM clients or chats, the punchline is usually “connect with your friends” or something similar. With Tworl, it’s exactly the opposite, as Tworl connects you with a completely random IM user. The idea is cool, but I can’t see myself using my main IM accounts for conversations with total strangers and exposing them to spam; of course, creating a new IM account just for the purpose of Tworling will do the trick.
Mabber
Mabber has the advantage of working both on the web and on your mobile phone. It supports AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk. In a recent relaunch, they also added a widget which you can use to put up a chatbox on your blog. Finally, you can use it to get news through its RSS-based Mabber alert.
Geesee
Geesee is a competitor to 3bubbles and Itzle: it doesn’t offer a centralized chat space, but it lets you have a chat box on your blog. Works with a number of platforms, including Typepad, Wordpress, and even Netvibes.
Plugoo
Plugoo is a cross breed of sorts. It supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, ICQ and Jabber accounts, and lets you chat with the visitors of your blog directly from any IM program you normally use. If you really want to keep up a conversation with the visitors of your site, this is much better than having your visitors type stuff into a chat box which always says you’re offline.
RadiusIM
This Manhattan-based IM service combines web-based chat with Google Maps, allowing you to chat with people in your area. What’s more, you can aggregate multiple IM names - from Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN Messenger and Google Talk. These logins are saved by Radius IM, which saves having to enter all your passwords. The service announced angel funding of $500,000 last week.
Itzle
Slightly different from other IM services: Itzle allows you to chat with friends about web pages while your avatar character walks around on them. There’s no download required: instead, you hit a bookmarklet in your browser to make the miniature characters appear. we think it has novelty value, but it can’t really be considered useful.
Gabbly
Gabbly is an ajaxy chatbox for bloggers and websites. It actually runs on Gabbly’s site, with your site running in a iFrame underneath.At the time of writing, there are almost 1000 people chatting - not bad for a little startup.
ZohoChat
Part of the Zoho suite of office productivity tools, Zoho Chat lets you chat with buddies on the site or embed the shoutbox elsewhere. The embed uses iFrames, so it won’t work everywhere, and it also lacks the ability to aggregate you IM names from different services. That said, it’s a super-simple way to set up a chat, especially if you already use Zoho tools.
Recommended: Piczo Stuff at Mashcodes!
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