Dead Simple Flash Based WebChat For MySpace

MySpace IM is popular – as many as twenty percent of users on the site at any time are also logged in to their IM client. But it’s only available via a download for Windows machines, locking out everyone else. There is no official MySpace support for webchat or non-Windows clients.

Pidgin, Trillian and eBuddy have announced support for MySpace IM via a reverse engineering of their proprietary text-based protocol. The version of Trillian that supports MySpace, however, is in private beta, and I have never been able to get eBuddy to work properly with MySpace IM.

So if you really, really want MySpace webchat, you can now use unofficialmyspaceim, a new flash based site build by Prasad Mahendra. I tested it, it works. I even had a somewhat unsatisfying chat with MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson.

Beware – you have to enter your MySpace credentials to use the service, and there’s no guarantee this service won’t use them for, well, anything they want.

Also, you may not have to wait too long for official Mac and webchat versions of MySpace IM. Rumor is they’re already working on it.