Joost Scraps Inline Chat for Meebo

Joost, a free, long-form video service designed to take TV to the desktop, is launching a new version of its platform which appears to be missing a notable feature. Apparently scrapped is Joost's own inline chat client, with the company opting instead to align with Meebo, a cross-platform chat service that supports MSN, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Google Talk, as well as ICQ and Jabber.

Meebo is natively browser-based, but since Joost typically consumes the whole screen, it will be integrated as a layer atop the application, eliminating the need to switch to the browser. While Meebo seems an odd choice, since Skype was actually co-founded by Joost's founder Niklas Zennström, Joost is separate now, still growing, and has plenty of venture capital to play with.