Discontinuing support for all third-party messaging networks | Hacker News Reader

Discontinuing support for all third-party messaging networks

blog.imo.im

40 pointsNavarr48 comments

I have never used this App but if I did I would also be uninstalling it right now. Chat/messaging apps are not primarily about features, they are about connections. They are social. I don't care if your chat app is awesome if none of my friends are on it.

I have been a long term supporter of Trillian for just that reason, cross platform support. It's quirky at times but it gives me as many protocols as possible in one place, and a combined list of all my friends through one interface. It also syncs across all my devices (multiple PC's and Android tablets/phones) As long as they keep that up they maximize the social connections... and my loyalty.

They likely want to become a standalone messaging app in the hopes of an acquisition as messaging apps seem to be mimicking the Search Engine wars of 1999.

Does anyone have recommendations for a good multi chat app replacement besides trillian?

The timing certainly is striking.

Agreed, a very good point there.

> Does anyone have recommendations for a good multi chat app replacement besides trillian?

Pidgin (Win/Linux), Empathy (Linux), Adium (OS X), or Finch (Console-based, on Linux/OS X).

Which is funny because there was a messaging client war in the late '90's as well.

I'm waiting for someone to reinvent IRC for smart phones.

irccloud.com,

https://slack.com/

Miranda IM, http://www.miranda-im.org/ Its windows only but runs in Wine on OSX and Linux

IM has simply become a mess with isolated protocols.

Couldn't have said it better myself. As soon as imo drops support for other messengers my connections are gonna go from over a 100 to 4. And I'm powerless to fix this.

What's really shitty, in my opinion, is that they're giving 3 days notice, and only 7 days to download your chat logs for those networks. (For those unaware, retrieving your chat logs has been a feature of IMO for a very, very long time).

After Meebo, and now this, as well as their dropped support for skype, and extreme pluralization of all IM / chat mediums, and dropping of most generally accessible protocols... the web really seems to be splitting into apps, and it's a sad frustrating reality.

Currently, to talk to everyone I speak to regularly requires: Skype, Hangouts (multiple), IRC, AIM, WhatsApp, HipChat, Viber, Yahoo!, Facebook Chat...

Because I need 4x hangouts (1 per company I work with, contracting, my own business, personal, etc) and many of the other apps either won't work with other clients, or have crippled features or usefulness, I end up running 10 "chat" clients.

grumpy old man voice Back in my day, we used to be able to setup all our text based messaging in one pidgin client, or a bitlbee instance! Damned kids.

It's not as bad now, since most platforms these days insist on a push mechanism that is common to all the apps. You're stuck with different UIs, but the cost is still like running a single client. Even better, because now they cannot run continuously in the background.

To be fair Skype (MS) cut them off and without any warning. It wasn't their decision. That was actually one of the reasons they cited for doing this. Always at the mercy of external decision makers.

...and removed.

It wasn't all that long ago when we fought this message interop battle the firsst time with AOL, MSN and Yahoo! Messenger. Now the problem is back in spades: Imo, Hangouts, iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook, ...

IMO is pretty much making itself irrelevant with this move. I barely used it, mainly to get Google IM's on my iphone, with this move...it's now uninstalled.

@whodaman, you've been hellbanned. Neither of your comments seems to deserve it, so it's not clear why.

Assuming you see this (can't reply to you directly), I think the usual advice is to email pg.

The world does not need another damn stand-alone messaging service. I already have to use enough of them, which is why I started using imo.im in the first place! It was the only place I needed to go to be able to communicate across all my contacts, and it being a web app made it so much easier. Now that they don't service this need, I have no reason to continue using them.

Time to close the account.

As soon as they made having an imo.im login mandatory, I had a sinking feeling it was the beginning of the end, and jumped ship (to the terrible compromise of AIM Express[0]). I had preferred Meebo for my third-party web messaging for a few years (handy in computer labs where you don't own the box!), but the Google acquisition took that away, so I'd switched to imo. Now they're both kaput.

A sad day for multiprotocol web messaging.

[0] http://www.aim.com/products/express/

Bummer. Used them for several years with the web client. Used Android client off and on at various times. As others commented, chat history across all services was great and one of their strengths.

Switching to Adium as I don't know anyone using imo.im's network. 5 years later, all the chat services will realize "We need to find a way to talk across services". Either XMPP or some other standard will become commonplace. Seems cyclical.

Third party messaging was the only reason I used imo

Ugg. I've been loving the web chat, but first meebo then imo died a bad death.

Time to go back to https://www.trillian.im/, I guess.

I stopped using IMO when Skype stopped supporting them.

The other way around.

Skype stopped giving 3rd party access a long time ago.

Skype pulled the plug, not imo.

Tried their web app a couple of years ago and was rather impressed (mainly due to their Skype support). However, it drifted away from my focus.

Whoa they have their own network. But then again, their original strength was the combination of OTHER im networks, where i could communicate with them all in one place.

Right now, i wonder why ever try this again?

I've always preferred IMO as a client for all my XMPP accounts. I need to start looking for alternatives now.

aka what's app story made us craving

Well, looks like I'm deleting imo right now. I have absolutely no need for their own chat network.

IM+ is a good alternative https://plus.im

Pidgin is a great alternative!

unfortunately it's not a webapp

Right, so you use it on your computer alongside your web apps. Better to use real apps as opposed to web apps that will be taken away with 3 days notice.

that's true, but as a freelancer that operates on OTHER people's computers... imo made life very convenient (especially having multiple gchat accounts concurrently with multiple yahoo / facebook account (yeah some holdouts are chatting on all)

Might I humbly suggest carrying Pidgin with you on a USB stick or similar using our app, then: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/pidgin_portable

I find it quite handy with operating in other environments.

Pidgin isn't really an alternative. One of the best things about imo was remotely stored chat history, access to both the history and your IMs across devices (including ones you missed while you were out), etc.

Pidgin doesn't run in a web browser Window.

It sucks that I now have to go back to a stand alone IM app, I've been using a web based client for close to a decade now.

Steam chat can be used in browser windows, and that's what I use on my phone.

I'll use finch over ssh

Any recommendations for an Android messaging app that allows you to be connected to mutliple Google accounts at once? I loved imo.im for this, and it was way better than any others I tried.

ChatSecure? Xabber?

Hangout supports multiple Google accts.

imo is a great chat client. slick, modern, beautiful & has a web app. This decision is very unfortunate as there don't seem to be any good alternatives. Here are their founders explaining the reasons behind it.

http://maratryndin.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/why-imo-messenge...

IMO, this seems like a pretty bad idea.

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