RSS Feeds: Is IMO the Final Instant Messenger Killer Application?
Shortly after I published my previous article on magicJack, I received a message from Gloria Tzou, the lady in charge of marketing at IMO. She thought I'd be interested in IMO and passed me the recent press release. At first I had flashbacks of "Meebo", but quickly realized this is so much more.
I haven't really tested the service yet, so I'm going to give you my initial impressions and then post the press release.
Initial Impressions
The website, as you can plainly see when you arrive, is in the "alpha" stage. It's clearly labeled above the sign-in form. As such, I don't expect everything to work perfectly — the form is just a little too close to the edge of the screen.
There's no clear indicator as to how to use the service, but I saw that I could simply log in to my Yahoo Instant Messenger account and I did. The login in was quick, faster than logging in with the Yahoo IM client, and the display was quick and snappy. They make good use of AJAX and that's something I would tend to expect from a service founded by a software engineer who's also an ex-Google employee.
I noticed there was a Windows desktop client to download, so I downloaded it and installed it. It's not as pretty as other IM desktop clients, but hey, it's an "alpha" remember? Anyway, my computer runs Windows XP with the minimum amount of memory until I get off my lazy duff and buy another memory module. Running two clients (Skype and Yahoo IM) sucks resources as well as memory and anything I can do to cut that down to size is a good thing.
Until I get a chance to use it for multiple IM protocols, including video and voice, I'll reserve my final judgment. In the meantime, have a look at the press release (slightly reformatted to make it easier to read).
Press Release
ex-Googler startup imo.im Launches Skype Support, Voice & Video Capability
March 05, 2009 – Palo Alto — imo.im is a free online service co-founded by ex-Googler Georges Harik that aims to make online communication more intuitive and accessible. It couples voice, video, and text chat capabilities with the most popular instant messaging protocols. Currently in alpha stage development, the startup has released an update that introduces major new features and makes imo.im one of the only multi-protocol instant messaging services to offer Skype support.
In addition to Skype, MySpace Chat support has been added in the latest release. Voice and Video capabilities are now also functional on all supported networks–AIM, GTalk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, MySpace, Skype, and Yahoo. No download or registration is required to use the service, and multiple accounts on different instant messaging networks can be linked together to one sign-in.
Language support has been expanded as well, through imo's user-driven translation program launched in April 2008. With this system, imo now offers language support for Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Macedonian, French, Turkish, and more.
Finally, eight new features have been added giving users the ability to:
- Star favorite buddies for easy reference
- Upload and view buddy icons
- Search for offline as well as online buddies
- Change how a buddy’s display name appears in the contacts list
- Move buddies between groups
- Block and unblock buddies
- Set yourself as invisible upon login
- Voice and video chat with anyone
For a comprehensive list of imo.im features, please visit the imo.im website. Other questions or inquiries can be directed to gloria@imo.im.
About imo.im
imo.im (http://imo.im/about.html) is a web-based multi-network instant messaging service. It lets users IM chat with buddies on AIM, Google Talk, MSN, MySpace, Skype, and Yahoo simultaneously. The company was founded by Georges Harik (co-developer of Google's AdSense technology), Ralph Harik, and Praveen Krishnamurthy in April 2007.
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Mmmm, another tool to distract me at the office. From what I have read, it sounds promising and may well gain significant traction in the IM market. Having said that, I think I'll reserve judgment and wait for the Beta version to come out first…
imo.im is really great I used it when I'm chatting with my classmate having different account. It's really convenient.
To be very true, I don't like such web applications because desktop messengers are better to handle. Bad thing about many Linux distros is that they don't have Google talk but I got the solution. It is empathy messenger which works like a charm.
To get contacts from different applications in one sing-in sounds really good! You dont need to waste precious operational memory on running few similar apps!
Perhaps it is my internal Linux error but I failed to connect my Gtalk on the site. It failed to send and receive voice data. Anyways, nice utility and it might work very well on a windows system.