Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with Mike Jone of Userplane. We had time to discuss Userplane’s recent partnership announcement with Converdge. I also explored what services Userplane currently offers, what sort of monetization models Userplane currently uses and how Mike sees chat platforms evolving over the coming months.

One thing I brought up during the conversation was the recent launch of Meebo’s competing platform and what his thoughts were. I also suggested that AOL work on acquiring Meebo to integrate into Userplane. Mike couldn’t confirm that an acquisition was in the works unfortunately!

Mike took time to discuss some new features that Userplane will be releasing in the coming weeks as well as discuss his thoughts on how Userplane fits into the social application space. Listen to my podcast with Mike to hear more!

 

 Interview with Mike Jones, CEO of Userplane [17:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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.