The app includes additional features such as group chats, private chats, voice IMs, file sharing, voice calling and optional push notifications. The app is able to be run simultaneously on multiple devices to allow conversations to continue and conversation histories to be seen regardless of the device.
IMO was launched in Palo Alto in April 2007 by Ralph Harik, a former Oracle engineer; and Georges Harik, former Director of Googlettes and one of Google’s first 10 engineers, where he was responsible for creating products like Gmail, Google Talk, Google Mobile and Picasa. The IMO application was released initially as a web-only instant messaging service. It spread to iPhone and Android operating systems in 2010, and then later to BlackBerry and iPad. The high-quality voice component was added first to Android smartphones in February 2012, followed by iPhone in August 2012, and then Android tablets and iPad in December 2012. IMO launched video calling in the beta version on July 22, 2013, which was moved out of beta as of late August.
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 6 million mobile downloads to date.
