It all started long ago with ICQ (I-Seek-You). Back then instant messaging was equivalent to ICQ. Then came a few new kids on the block: AOL Messenger and later MSN Messenger.

The new kids quickly grew bigger and even more players entered the scene such as Yahoo Messenger. Of course the big downside to this diversity of messenger services was that your friends were all sooner or later on different networks. To chat with Bob you needed ICQ, but Klaas didn't know better and used MSN. And no question Achmed would only chat with you through Yahoo Messenger.

To solve this problem more and more überclients appeared, which made it possible to connect to multiple services using only one client. You must have heard of Trillian, Miranda or Pidgin, just to name a few. This was great for people who liked to keep things simple and have one client to connect to all their friends!
Which brings me to what this post is all about, Meebo.

Meebo.com is an online instant messenging service which let's you connect to all instant messenging networks known to man! Well at least AIM (AOL), MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo and Jabber. It also has it's own network, surprisingly called Meebo - don't ask me why they thought it necessary to create yet another network.

The web site sports some nice features.
Such as sign on to multiple networks at once and display all your friends in one simple chat interface. You can also sign on as invisible if you like to avoid your friends.
The internationalisation of the site is impressive to say the least. Besides Malagasy, Punjabi and Swahili, they even offer languages only spoken by few freaks - like me - and languages spoken by people with lots of imaginary friends. l337, H4ck3r, ..Latin, you name it!

All in all I think this site is a great tool for when I'm not at home and an interesting one to remember in my bookmarks.
Source: http://www.meebo.com