With Meebo Shutting Down, Here are some alternatives
News broke a few days ago that Google hat acquired yet another company. The company this time was the popular web instant messaging service Meebo, and it quickly was announced that most of the services that Meebo was offering were being shut down as a consequence. While it is very likely that they may appear in Google+ in one way or the other, Meebo users for now are left without alternatives.
This article looks at some alternatives that are currently available on the Internet, and while they may not replicate the Meebo service 100%, they may support the features that you may require. I have only included services in the list that still seem to be actively maintained.
Web-based alternatives
This services let you connect to instant messaging services and protocols in your Internet browser. Many offer mobile apps and other means of connection as well.
Imo.im is a web based service that lets you sign in to several popular messaging services that include heavyweights such as MSN, Skype, Facebook, AIM, ICQ, Google Talk and VKontakte. You can use your service credentials to sign in on the Imo.im website to chat with your contacts right on the site. Imo.im furthermore makes available mobile apps for all major operating systems including iOS, Android, Blackberry and Nokia devices.
The operators of the service furthermore have added features to their service, for instance voice message support, a discovery network for new people and contacts, as well as options to manage multiple networks simultaneously.
eBuddy lets you sign in to services such as MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk or Facebook on their website. Just use the sign-in form on the frontpage to sign in to your messenger of choice. Once logged in, you can chat with your instant messenger contacts as if you would be using a software to do so.
Mobile apps for iPhone, Android and classic phones is available as well if you want mobile access as well.
Trillian is offered as a web app, desktop applications and for mobile devices. It supports a wide variety of services but is not the most intuitive program to navigate, especially not on the web. A pro version is available that Trillian users can upgrade their accounts to. Pro users get options to store their chats online and benefit from an ad free environment for $12 a year.
Desktop alternatives
Programs for the desktop that allow you to connect to different instant messaging networks.
Adium (Mac) is a free instant messaging client for Mac OS X that supports a wide variety of services. Besides the usual, it is also supporting IRC, Twitter, Apple MobileMe, Novel Groupwise and other lesser known services.
Digsby (Windows) is a popular client for the Microsoft Windows operating system that supports instant messaging, social networking and email accounts. It packs a lot of features, including syncing between different computer systems, personalization options, the option to rename contacts or sending SMS messages to friends right from withing the program interface.
Empathy (Linux), a multi-protocol application supporting Google Talk, MSN, IRC, Salut, AIM, Facebook, Yahoo and others. Features include file transfer support, voice and video call options, conversation logging and private / group chat capabilities.
Instantbird (Windows, Mac, Linux) by Mozilla is available for all major operating systems and more than a dozen different languages. One of the interesting features of this multi-network instant messenger is its support for add-ons, which can be compared to add-ons in the Firefox browser or the Thunderbird email client.
Miranda (Windows) supports a variety of protocols and ships with its own add-on engine as well to improve the functionality of the client further.
Pidgin (Windows, Mac, Linux) supports all major protocols and chat networks, including MSN, AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and IRC. It supports plugins which can add support for additional services or protocols to the instant messaging client plus improvements in security or privacy, notifications, the interface, and various other elements of the client.
List of additional clients
Closing Words
If you are looking for a Meebo alternative you have lots of choice, from web based services such as Imo.im to desktop-based applications like Pidgin. The majority of services support the same protocols with some, like Pidgin, supporting a wider variety of protocols thanks to plugin support.
Are you using an instant messenger currently? If so, which program or service are you making use of for that purpose?
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Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.