JiveTalk is iChat for your iPhone

JiveTalk As disappointed as many of us were with the announcement that fully fledged third-party apps wouldn’t be available on the iPhone, the fact remains that web developers are still plenty capable of creating great apps. And, better yet, filling in some of the gaps that Apple has left.

The lack of instant messaging has bothered many, including myself, especially since as far as we can tell, there’s no technological reason that it shouldn’t be possible. And just to prove that point, there’ve already been several web-based IM clients launched for the iPhone. Of the ones I’ve tried, the most promising belongs to the folks over at Beejive: JiveTalk.

Using JiveTalk is simple: fire up Safari on your iPhone and head over to iphone.beejive.com. While it may not have all the niceties of iChat or Adium, JiveTalk does let you send and receive Instant Messages with multiple buddies and it supports multiple accounts on AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, and Yahoo. JiveTalk’s just in alpha, so there are plenty of improvements on the way, such as status messages, and buddy management capabilities. And it definitely feels like an app, with chat bubbles and dialog boxes that fade out.

I’m still holding out hope that Apple will deliver an IM client down the road, but for the moment, JiveTalk looks like a good way to fill that niche.

Category: Software

Posted by Dan Moren on Jul 10 2007, 10:47 AM ET

Comments (4)

Well that didn't take very long at all, did it? The JiveTalk servers seem a bit sluggish today as every iPhone user rushes to create and configure their accounts (though in fairness, it could be Comcast sucking again). One line review: It's first and it's good.

A friend had my favorite quote about iPhone's lack of an IM client: "Was this a smartphone designed by people who had never actually used a smartphone?"

Posted by Dan Berkes | July 10, 2007 1:15 PM

Question-- twice when Ive used it at home with my wi-fi-- it has switched me from wi-fi to Edge-- is this coincidental or am I getting Oliver Stone about this ?? Also-- a stupid question-- but these chats wont count against our SMS chat allocation with AT&T will they ?

Otherwise this was a great app !

Posted by Eddy Vera | July 10, 2007 6:31 PM

does anyone know if it works in the background? i.e. if i put the phone in my pocket and go for a walk will i still be logged into aim and get messages? or for that mater if i close the safari program and play with the ipod features when i switch back will i see any missed messages from friends? i'd like to be wrong on this, but it seems the answer is probably no.

Posted by tom | July 10, 2007 8:04 PM

@Eddy: I think the Wi-Fi to EDGE switch is coincidental. I haven't noticed a problem with it. And no, it doesn't count as your SMS messages, because it's a Safari web app.

@tom: It does actually work in the background, apparently. I switched out of Safari and into another app to test it (only briefly), and when I came back, my conversation was still going. I think it'll keep running as long as your network connection is up. Not totally sure, though.

Posted by Dan Moren | July 10, 2007 11:18 PM

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