Meebo is young, free, savvy and experiencing a tremendous growth spurt.  Meebo lets you access and chat with any or all of your instant messaging buddies from anywhere in the world. Beyond just IM options, you'll find Meebo rooms for private chats, Meebo Me to add chat to your own Web site, Meebo Repeater to use when access is restricted, plus games and other applications.

Compared to IM services like AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Yahoo Messenger, Meebo is just a kid, having launched in 2005. And Meebo lacks the breadth of features that those services and some others offer. But Meebo has something they don't -- the ability to cut across service boundaries, connecting Yahoo Messenger, AOL/AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Jabber and ICQ users so they can all talk together. That's by registering and signing on via the Meebo Web site. No download or software installation is necessary.

meebo
Image courtesy of Meebo
­A favorite of teens, Meebo allows users to send instant-messages to friends around the world.

The Meebo formula seems to be working. Users exchange more than 100 million IMs daily, according to the Meebo Web site. It's been called the fastest growing IM destination by Nielsen//NetRatings with usage up 354 percent from August 2006 to June 2007. Along the way, Meebo won a Web 2.0 award in 2006 and 2007 and was included among Time magazine's Top 50 coolest Web sites for 2006 and PC World's 100 best products for 2006 and 2007.

What's a Meebo?
No relation to an amoeba, actually. According to Meebo co-founder Sandy Jen, the company's three founders brainstormed over lunch one day. They were looking for a two-syllable name without prior associations that would be easy to remember and spell. Back at the office, they ran each of the 50 possibilities through a browser and eliminated all but a handful because they already were taken. Meebo emerged as the winner [source: Meebo blog].

How does Meebo make it work? First, the user signs in at the Meebo Web site, and his computer connects with a Meebo server. When the user starts an IM session, Meebo uses a modified and optimized version of GAIM, an open-source client, to create a network connection with the user's IM network. The connection of user computer, Meebo server and IM network takes place almost instantaneously [source: Meebo blog].

While most Meebo users are 25 years old or younger, they also include others, such as U.S. soldiers IMing home from Iraq and workers talking to friends from the office. U.S. Meebo users only account for 30 percent of the total, so Meebo is available in 60-plus languages and dialects (even including Klingon and Pig Latin) [source: CenterNetworks].

Not a Fan
Not everyone is fond of Meebo. Trying to keep workers and students on task, employers and schools have blocked access to IM networks like AIM or Yahoo Messenger. About 35 percent of employees use IM at work, according to a 2006 survey by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, and 50 percent of them download free IM tools off the Web. If access is blocked, workers and students may still be able to use Meebo to IM with their friends.

Next, let's take a look at how easy it is to get started with Meebo.