Jitsi

With Jitsi on your PC you will be able to stay in touch with all your friends, even if some are on Facebook, some are on Google’s and some are on the Yahoo! protocol. That is because Jitsi provides support for multiple protocols. It is a user friendly, feature-rich IM client that you can use to stay in touch with friends, family, and more.

Jitsi is available for multiple operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu, Debian, RPM, Arch Linux, and Android (experimental Android build at the time of writing this). A setup wizard will help you quickly install Jitsi on your Windows-powered machine; once the installation completes you will be invited to launch Jitsi; and when you launch it, you are presented with a “configure all your protocols window” that allows you to set up the login credentials for SIP, XMPP, Facebook, Google Talk, MSN, AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo.

The interface is just what you would expect from an IM client: a long list of contacts takes up the main part of the interface, there’s a File Menu at the top, and there’s a section underneath the File Menu that allows you to set up your status, pick a profile pic, access the dial pad, and search for contacts.

The functionality offered by Jitsi is just what you would expect from an IM client: text messaging, audio and video chat, emoticons, create contact groups, chat rooms, conference call, pop-up notifications, password protection, chat history, keyboard shortcuts, private conversations, and more. To put it simply, you have all the functionality you need to stay in touch with your contacts.

Jitsi is a free and open source application.

Jitsi is an efficient IM client that will help you stay in touch with friends spread across different platforms.