Meebo, the chat widget tool, had already launched its own ad network some time ago. Now the company is launching ads on its own partner network, with Toyota being the first marketer to advertise. With 85 publishers signed up for its partner network, Meebo is enabling brands to run ads on a larger scale directly through Meebo’s company, with the same results they’ve grown accustomed to on Meebo.com.

What’s this really mean? In Meebo’s long-standing effort to expand its own network, web presence and visibility, the integrated communication tool has launched several tools and gained several partners, many of which have teamed up with the company for marketing purposes. This is in part due to the fact that Meebo’s integrated communication tools enable brands to connect directly with consumers through multimedia brand messages, chat, and advertisements. On the consumer end, these communication tools provide great channels for product and brand discussion as well as valuable feedback that marketers can use in their larger data pools.
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Meebo has made some major upgrades to one of its product services, the Meebo Bar. As a turnkey solution for integrating chat into a site where those site users can interact directly with each other, the Meebo bar enabled a community feel within any integrated destination site. The upgrade to this aspect of Meebo is the ability to pull all your chat buddies into your buddy list, regardless of which partner site you’re using to access Meebo. In short, any partner site with Meebo chat integration now supports all your chat buddies across the supported chat clients. As you may well know, these supported chat clients include AOL, Yahoo, Gchat, Facebook, and more.

The purpose of this particular upgrade is actually twofold; it not only brings a more comprehensive chat option to end users for seamless access to all their buddies, but it provides an easier and more direct way of sharing web content. To that end, another upgrade to Meebo is the sharing option, which allows users to share content from their current web page across chat, email, Facebook and Twitter. What we’re looking at here is a combining of direct media-sharing via chat with social web redistribution of content.
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Meebo’s latest partnership is with myYearbook, the social networking site started by teenagers for fellow high schoolers. The partnership includes myYearbook using Meebo chat as a prominent feature on every page of its site, providing chat tools for Meebo users and guests alike.

The partnership should be a win-win for both Meebo and myYearbook, as instant messaging is a highly requested feature from myYearbook users. myYearbook is one of the largest networks dedicated to the high school age demographic. This specific user base is also quite active when it comes to online activity, making it a good fit for Meebo’s chat and media-sharing tools.
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Meebo, the online chat service that lets you log into all your instant messenger clients from a central location, has announced its agreement with Universal Music Group as its latest partner. This deal signifies a branding opportunity for both Meebo and UMG, as the music company will be able to distribute premium content through Meebo’s various services and enable users to share it with their friends from there.
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Last night Meebo announced a slew of new partners for its white-label instant messaging service. The announcement also included statements that the company now has almost 73 million monthly users which is most definitely a bold statement. I took the opportunity to speak with Seth Sternberg, CEO of Meebo, about what these announcements mean for his company and what the future holds.

We discussed Meebo and potential integration with mobile platforms as well as how his product fits on the social web. Meebo offers a product which is nearly identical to Userplane and heavily resembles Facebook’s new chat client. I spoke with Seth about these similarities and what all of the recent chat services means for the future of chat on the web.

Check out our interview below to learn more about the future of Meebo and chat on the web!

Today, Userplane has announced partnerships with three additional providers, Small Worlds Labs, Magnify and Pringo. Users of the new platforms leverage the power of Userplane’s chat and instant messaging applications. At this point it appears that there is a war of press releases going on in the social platform instant messaging space. While Userplane has been providing solutions to social networks for years, only last week did we learn that the new chat solutions are similar to Facebook chat, integrating directly with a social network’s user base and user connections.

Just last night Meebo announced that they too would be offering external web-based chat solutions to third-party websites. While the company already had a widget-based chatroom solution, the new offerings go head to head with Userplane. Will the company be able to take away clients from the company which previously faced little if no competition?

Not sure but given Meebo’s rapid growth over the past few years, there will definitely be new found tension between the two companies. Userplane was acquired by AOL back in 2006 and has since continued on an aggressive path, sparking partnerships with many third-party sites to embed their robust chat solution.

As I said last night, web-based chat solutions for social platforms has suddenly become an area to keep your eyes on.

Tonight Meebo, the web-based instant-messaging company, announced that they are launching an instant messaging platform for third-party communities. This new product appears to go head to head with the new platform announced by Userplane in partnership with Converdge last week and their partnership with KickApps announced this week.

The launch partners for this new platform include DanceJam, Flixster, myYearbook, AddictingGames,Piczo, SparkArt, Sugar Publishing and Tagged. This new service will enable live chatting on various online communities around the web and expected to extend to other communities in the near future. This announcement almost perfectly coincides with Userplane’s recent announcements.

Meebo appears to be getting more aggressive with their new expansion strategy now extending their chat platform to over 54.8 million users globally and 23.6 million users domestically. Meebo had previously launched a chatroom widget which enabled any website to easily embed a chatroom directly onto any page on their site.

From the get go, Meebo will work with their partners to help monetize both instant message chats as well as group chats on their sites. The partners will share in ad revenue generated by Mmeemo’s new inline ads called “SparkAds.” If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because Userplane offers a practically identical service. It appears that there is a fierce battle among instant message providers to strike partnerships with large social networks.

Who thought one of the primary battles for the social web would still be instant messaging, years after AIM, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger defined themselves as the leaders in instant messaging. The battle over instant messaging will be an interesting one to watch. If you want more details on how to get Meebo on your own social network visit meebo.com/CommunityIM.