Although I’m still an Adium man on my primary Mac, I’ve been using the excellent online IM client Meebo for years to keep in contact with a decade’s worth of collected buddies scattered across ever instant messaging protocol under the sun across multiple machines.
Unfortunately, using the Meebo site on the iPhone was never quite as good as an experience. I’m really excited to see, then, that they’ve just released a native Meebo app to the iTunes App Store.
All the best features of Meebo are here, including searchable chat history across all of your Meebo sessions, regardless of machine, and support for just about every IM protocol under the sun. The Meebo app will also push IM notifications to you when the app is closed, and early reports suggest that it keeps you logged in far longer than just about any other IM app out there. It’ll even automatically reconnect when you lose coverage.
The best news, though, is the price: Meebo is completely free. I’ve been a huge fan of the Meebo web service for years: if you do any instant messaging on your iPhone at all, this is worth a download.