Chat apps are one of the most used on the web, as they provide instant connection to the person you are trying to communicate in real time. Back in the yearly years on the Internet, chat apps were the only medium of communication through internet. With the advent of various social networking sites as well as mail chat clients, chat apps started to lose some of their ground. But, in recent survey it is found out that people often use multiple social networking accounts and mail clients.
So, people felt a need of an all-in-one chat client which will provide multiple chat accounts to all the chat clients available in the web. Thus, the re-incarnation of chat clients or IM (Instant Messaging, duh!) was inevitable. Here in this article, I present a list of top 4 web apps which you can easily use to chat in real time. And the best part is, they are free!
1. IMO.IM 
One of the most famous IM chat app available on the web, the first and foremost thing that you will like about this one is its interface. It is slick, fast and user friendly, and supports various chat clients such as Skype, AIM, Facebook, Gtalk, MSN, Jabber, ICQ etc. And voila, it supports video chatting as well! Make a unified account, and access all of your accounts in one place. Also, it has a special feature which lets you to create a video chat room on the go.
2. Zinzzchat (Zinzzchat.com)
It was originally built as a quick and disposable chat room online, which evolved in supporting video as well, with a capability of multi-broadcast up to 12 simultaneous connections. You can sign in with your Facebook or Twitter accounts to reserve a private chat room.
3. Meebo (meebo.com)
Ok, most of the web apps support multiple instant client accounts by seamlessly integrating them in one software. But, even then you have to switch between multiple accounts to chat. Meebo integrates all friend lists into one big buddy list, relieving you of virtually all the pain! Meebo keeps an ongoing message history for all of your conversations, and not to mention that it supports all the major chat clients like Facebook, Gtalk, Yahoo, Windows Live etc. The interface is polished, but with ads to generate revenue.
4. Trillian (trillian.im)
It is a downloadable, multi-protocol, multi account supported chat client which aggregates all of your chat clients into one roof. The special feature is that you can individually login to your chat accounts to connect in real time. Supported chat accounts are MySpace, Yahoo, Facebook, Gtalk, Jabber, ICQ, AIM and Windows Live.
Now, the one you should choose entirely depends on how you want to connect with your friends. Be it video support, all-in-one integration, these apps provide the best and easy online chat experience on the web.
Erik works for Ny Industries tech INC. he’s blogger, father, and full time web guru. follow @erikny.
