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Meebo: Not Just a Pretty IM Tool

Everybody’s getting into the multi-platform apps game (including Google, whose Maka-Maka may make mince meat of Facebook’s piddly open apps party). Even Apple’s opening to third-party apps for its iPhone offering.

Meebo is a hosted service that actually joins platforms instead of spreading seeds onto them. And frankly, it’s past due for a little disruption.

Multi-chat users may know Meebo for the ease with which it enables you to talk to friends on AIM, Gchat, Messenger and other clients without having to sign in one-by-one, or navigate multiple buddy lists. It also enables you to access buddies anywhere and save conversations. It’s part SaaS streaming CMS and part widget.

But Meebo — which is six million users strong — is also a mutable application that’s social networking friendly and capable of hosting other things, too. Think of it as a pliant tool for disseminating video or music, building communities, you name it. Indeed, Meebo’s already trying to get hype flowing in the direction of video with its Gomeebo offering.

And while Google’s just getting into the open-apps game with OpenSocial and Maka-Maka — and Facebook seems to have pioneered the third-party apps game — we’d just like to point out there are other widely-used tools, ready and waiting for some bored dev to manipulate and improve it. Meebo may just be the underdog.