Google acquired Meebo recently to beef up its social offerings, and while we’ll probably start to see some of Meebo’s features show up in Google products eventually, existing Meebo users are in for some big changes.

On July 11th, 2012 Meebo is shutting down:

  • Meebo Messenger: A web-based chat client for AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live, and other services
  • Meebo Mobile apps: Chat apps for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry
  • Sharing on Meebo: A tool that lets users share items and find items matching their interests
  • Meebo Me: Meebo widgets that you could embed on a website

One of the nifty things about Meebo’s messenger apps has been the ability to store logs of your online conversations. If you don’t want your entire chat history to disappear on July 11th, you have until then to download your logs. Meebo has also set up an easy link for anyone that wants to delete their account right now.

Web publishers who are using the Meebo social bar on their websites will be able to continue using it — and Meebo will continue pushing new features. This is most likely the primary tool Google acquired Meebo for — although I wouldn’t be horribly disappointed if we saw some of the multi-protocol chat features brought to Google Talk and Gmail.

Goodbye Meebo Messenger, hello Trillian

I’ve actually been using Meebo’s web-based messenger as my primary IM app for the past few years, since it allows me to login from any computer with a web browser without installing any software. As soon as I learned Google was acquiring Meebo, I figured the app’s days were numbered and looked for an alternative.

The best I’ve found so far, comes from the folks at Trillian, long-time makers of cross-platform chat applications. Trillian offers a web-based chat app, and it’s also available in the Chrome Web store as a web app for Google Chrome and Chrome OS.

I prefer the look and feel of Meebo Messenger, but Trillian offers the same basic chat functionality, plus support for email notifications, but minus the chat logs.

Messenger apps for Mobile

Meebo offers one of the best cross-platform instant messaging apps for iOS, but the company’s Android app has always been a little more mediocre. Still, if you’re using Meebo on mobile, you’ve only got a little while to switch to an alternative. Here are some of the better options available:

Android

iOS

BlackBerry

Trillian also makes mobile apps for Android, iOS, and BlackBerry. And of course, BlackBerry’s BBM messenger service is still one of the most popular ways to send instant messages from a mobile device.

If you have other suggestions for mobile or web chat apps, let us know in the comments.

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13 replies on “Meebo shuts down on July 11th, here are some alternatives”

  3. Google buying Meebo makes me think that they want to tap the other mail accounts like Yahoo and MSN etc since they will now

    (1) have all our passwords!
    (2) possess the right mechanism to enter the IM systems.

  6. I’ve been using MeeboMe for an my website’s LiveChat function-

    Can anyone recommend a good alternative that isn’t costly or is free? A great function of MeeboMe was being able to having visitors not have to “log-in” to chat, customizable widget and ease of use on all platforms.

    Any ideas?

    1. Looking for the same, I use Zoho-chat for now on my site https://mkse.com, but to receive chats on my mobile device I need to keep an session of Jabber-client chat open.. kinda anniying. And the interface is worse than Meebo Me was.

  8. I tried to save my chat logs on the link provided by them. I got a zip file which contained html firefox documents. But I cannot open these. The message I got is: Windows cannot complete the extraction. The destination filecould not be created. What is wrong?
    Can you help me to see them?!!! Thanks a lot!

  9. Hey, I discovered meebo thanks to meebo bar on chess.com.. you can chat there in meebo chat (without actually having a meebo account) with your chess.com friends… Do you think this feature will stay there after July 11 ???

  11. For Trillian, I’d recommend looking into older versions as well. Personally, I hate the design of the most recent Trillian, but Trillian Astra (around version 4.0) has a pretty good and customizable look.

    Kind of shitty for Google to acquire a good service only to shut it down though.

  12. I know you mention it, but since it’s not in the list people might skip over it.. Trillian is available on all those mobile devices as well. I’ve been using Trillian for ages and love it.

    Also worth noting is that imo doesn’t just work on iOS. They also have Android, Blackberry and Nokia apps as well:
    https://imo.im/

    And no mobile client, but coworkers of mine use Digsby, which is available on Mac, Windows and Linux and looks to be comparable in many ways to Trillian.. but I like Trillian better
    https://www.digsby.com/

    Lastly, again not mobile, but Pidgin has been around for ages (previously called gAIM) and works in Windows, Linux and Mac. It’s libraries are used for many of these other apps from what I’ve seen.
    https://www.pidgin.im/download/

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