Userplane cross-platform chat now boarding all rows

Have chat accounts on Myspace? Facebook? Bebo? OkCupid? Userplane, the engine behind the chat functionality at those sites and many others, announced Tuesday that users of any site's Chat App portals can talk to users on any other site.

Userplane, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, operates its Web-based chat service on social networks and, in a smaller no-login fashion, on any site that wants to offer a chat option. It reaches about 50 million users in more than 15 countries each month -- or, if you like, over 275,000 communities.

The service offers a number of applications, including live chat, bulletin boards, IM (text, voice or video), audio e-mail, a media player, and video search. The free, ad-supported, no-login version of Userplane's chat application has proven quite popular among smaller sites. In August, the company launched Userplane Boards, which combine characteristics of IM (instant thread refresh, one-on-one conversation options) and message boards (persistence over time) with a few unique options. For instance, if you like a thread, pick up a copy and embed it your own site so you can keep an eye on it.

Social networking sites -- with some relatively closed-garden exceptions such as Facebook -- have been moving fast in the direction of maximum interoperability for about a year, since the launch of the OpenSocial project (in which Userplane has participated). OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for social networks, was introduced by Google, initially only for that company's Orkut service. That project struggled a bit in its early months, although currently, the specification is moving through the evolutionary process at version 0.9.