How do you message?

Facebook Chat, Google Talk, AIM and Skype are just a few ways in which you can stay connected to your friends; and now there’s a new platform that takes messaging service to a new level. Imo not only lets you text for free from all of the aforementioned services but it also conglomerates group messaging, photo sharing and voice messaging into onto simple tool.

With Imo, chatters can connect with up to 11 different messaging platforms at a time – and developers of the application have their sights set on adding more platforms to that space.

The messaging service was initiated by two brothers working in Silicon Valley – and not just at any companies, but the big ones. Both with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, the brothers left their jobs at Google and Oracle and took a stab at launching their own messaging startup. The inception came just before the release of the first iPhone in 2007.

How Does it Work?

As previously mentioned, imo allows users to connect to multiple accounts are a time and under only one log-in at a time, so that all of your messages can be kept in the same place, abandoning the inconvenience of switching between accounts to view conversations.

Says one brother, Ralph, about iom:

“Our goal was fast and easy communication. Remember having conversations on your desktop at home, but then [heading] to a friend’s house and being unable to look up that chat history? Our goal was to make chats widely available and work cross different browsers and machines.”

So, no matter where you are, you can revisit that conversation at any time ad from anywhere.

Another interesting add-on to imo is a feature called speech-to-text conversion. Ever get a text in all caps and spend too much time wondering whether your friend is yelling at you, or simply forgot that his Caps Lock was on? The speech-to-text conversion takes the guess out of texting. Although users will need to speak slowly and enunciate clearly, they can in fact leave voice messages for friends – minimizing the possible of misconception.

Imo.co recebtrly announced the free calling feature for iOS users over data plans and is even compatible with iOS 6. Not to mention: the speed of these calls over the LTE network is lightening quick and quite impressive. Expect to save about eight full seconds.
To date, imo carries about 600,000 users, with 45 million messages being transmitted every day.