Meebo Adds File Sharing To Webchat

Web chat startup Meebo, still basking in the glow of bringing instant messaging to the iPhone, is releasing a much requested new feature tonight: file sharing.

There are dozens of web based file sharing applications, such as YouSendIt and DropSend (we reviewed four P2P solutions here), but users often want to simply send a file to a friend while chatting with them. This is easy with desktop based chat, which usually allows for drag and drop file transfers. But there was no equivalent with web chat until now.

The back end of the service is hosted at Amazon S3. Meebo is eating the cost of the service, but limits file transfers to 10 MB each, with a 30 MB/month send limit per user. Look for a new “send file” button when chatting with someone on the Meebo website.

Meebo has raised a total of $12.5 million from Sequoia and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. They say 6 million people use the service monthly and spent around 2 hours per day, several times per week, on the site.