Everyone has now heard of and used instant messengers. When you meet someone you find interesting, you make sure to get his/her yahoo id or MSN id. And hope to catch them again on the messenger. Messengers have revolutionized the way people communicate. They are real time, you can chat with multiple persons at same time, you can connect from anywhere and the globe, and most importantly, they are completely free.
However, as their popularity is increasing, so is the number of messengers available out there is increasing. There are already three messengers that are widely popular available out there: Yahoo, MSN and Google Talk. On your machine you would have installed the messenger that you use mostly. But it is very likely that you go some other place, and you do not find your favorite messenger already installed. Installation of messenger might not be the best solution in those cases might not be to do a fresh installation. So, how to communicate with your friends in such situation? The answer is already out there: Web based messengers. These are websites that enable you to communicate with other messengers out there, without installing anything. Now, there are a lot of such websites out there. So, I thought this is the right time to do some evaluation, and turn out a list of Top 5 web based instant messengers.
1. Meebo: To put in a nutshell, this one is simple and still, perfect. As soon as you open the Meebo, you know how to use it. It provides you capability to connect to yahoo, Google, AIM, ICQ, MSN and Jabber. On its homepage itself, it gives you option to connect to any of these. The interface that it provides is simple and uncluttered. It makes efficient use of AJAX to provide users with a nice messaging experience. Apart from being simple, it is safe too. Meebo sends your passwords to server in an encrypted for. It also provides an option to create a universal Meebo login which saves you the trouble of entering different passwords for different messengers.
2. Kool IM: It is like a younger brother of Meebo. It provides almost same functionality as Meebo. It lets you connect to MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Google, ICQ and Jabber. And you can login to all of these together. You get a separate window for each conversation, just as in conventional messengers, and contact list also comes off as a separate window.
3. IloveIm: This is another cool service out there. It supports some of the modern technology such as AJAX. It opens the conversation window and contact list in the same browser window, so there are no lots of open browsers around. Only thing it lacks in is that it supports only MSN, Yahoo and AOL. There is no support for Google or ICQ as yet.
4. eBuddy: This is one of the veterans out there. It was one of the first web based instant messenger, but sadly, it hasn’t changed itself much. It hasn’t flexed its muscles since a long time to fight those well advanced newbie out there. However, it still gets the work done. It provides capability to connect to Yahoo, MSN and AOL. It misses out on Google talk and ICQ. As I said in the beginning, this might not be the sexiest one out there, but it gets the work done.
5. Instant-T Express Messenger: This is a real newcomer. It comes from a company that actually prints T-shirts (That’s where the Instant-T comes from)! But this one is really cool. It lets you connect to MSN, Yahoo, AOL and ICQ and login for all of these is provided on the home page itself. Its still in beta form, so there might still be a few glitches. But this one seems to be coming strong.
Apart from these, there are lots of other web based instant messenger services available. Each messenger has an official web messaging site of its own. But the ones I covered above address multiple messaging services. And they are really cool and easy to use. Their might be some better services available out, but these are the ones that stick out. Try them, you won’t mind using them.
