Since launching last year, Meebo the web-based instant messaging application has had phenomenal growth and great user adoption. This week they have announced a new set of features and upgrades to their application, the first since they announced their funding from Sequoia capital.
The best of the new features are that you can now create an account with Meebo and have access to all your instant messaging accounts with a single sign-on. The problem I have had to date with Meebo is that I do have a number of different accounts on different networks but the single sign-on and having a Meebo account solves that. They have added some cool features to it such as being able to sign in with a default status of invisible, see all your contacts across all networks in a single list, and having as many accounts as you wish. Single sign-off is coming shortly I am told.
I was at a dinner with Meebo co-founder Seth Sternberg during the week and he talked about these new features, the continuing growth as well as Meebo’s plans for the future. These guys are working on some exciting things and are now handling their large load of users well with more servers. Their growth is still extremely strong: they hit a new record of 396,000 connections in a day last week.
I am using Meebo as my full-time instant messaging client from today – and it is working well so far. Many of the incremental improvements have made the experience enjoyable for the user. It will be interesting to see how the competition responds to what Meebo are doing and if they will be able to sustain this growth over the next few months and beyond.