Starting Monday, all 3rd party instant messaging apps will be disconnected permanently from the imo messaging service. Originally, imo.im support encompassed 11 services, but two (Windows Live Messenger and Skype) were eliminated as of April 2013. By November 2013, this number had been reduced to eight, including imo.im’s own proprietary network. Starting Monday, this proprietary network is all that will remain on board the service.
The reasoning behind this change is simple: imo.im wants to be able to increase its reliability with consumers and do so without the hindrances that 3rd party support requirements may include.
“We believe these changes will let us … help people easily connect to the people they care about, wherever they are in the world.”
“Our goal in 2014 is to create the fastest and most reliable messaging, voice and video call service for users worldwide, and by focusing our expertise and time on these goals we hope to continue offering the best service possible to our users,” co-founder Ralph Harik said in a statement. “In order to deliver on that promise, we’re continuing to focus on innovation, as evidenced by recently becoming the first consumer messaging app to incorporate WebRTC. We believe these changes will let us do what we do best: Help people easily connect to the people they care about, wherever they are in the world.”
What about your chat history? The company is allowing users to download their chat histories from third party networks on o.imo.im until March 7, at which time they’ll be unobtainable. To download your history, visit the o.imo.im website, click on the settings gear at the top right, select Preferences and select Export chat history.
imo.im was founded in 2007. Since the beginning of 2012, IMO has gained 7 million unique users, with 700,000 users accessing the services daily, sending an average of 50 million messages a day. The application boasts more than 6 million mobile downloads to date. The app is available for iOS and Android as well as the web.
Update: added steps to download chat history.