Current stats and commentary on the instant messenger market: eBuddy and Meebo lead the pack

I thought it might be interesting after last evening's post about the new Yahoo Messenger to take a look at worldwide instant messenger usage. So I called on my friends at comScore and they sent over some data for February 2006/2007. I also reviewed a post from KenRadio but ignore his chart as the numbers are incorrect (the text appears to be correct).

The raw data is listed below in the table, but here are the important points that I can pull from the information:

• Overall, the numbers are up for all of the major networks except for the actual AOL network. It will be interesting to look at this chart once the new Yahoo browser-based Messenger is in place. I sure hope that the stats get tracked properly and added to the counts below
• The aggregation services, eBuddy (Cn coverage) and Meebo (Cn coverage) appear to have some of the best gains of the instant messengers included in the data. I still believe that the aggregators will win out long-term because as we use more of these services, loading multiple apps becomes troublesome. eBuddy and Meebo eliminate that issue and add way more functionality. The new eBuddy beta really rocks and I am sure Meebo is pushing forward as well.
• Both tom.com and Skype IM have moved quickly into the top-10. While tom.com appears to be asian so I don't have any data on it, Skype is currently one of my favorite apps. I expect both sites' numbers to grow. I wish the aggregators could pull Skype in... now that would be awesome.
• IMVU appears to be a hot new instant messaging tool and had the largest percentage growth. You can create 3d icons and actually be "in" the space. Looks really cool and right now they show over 25,000 people online.
• comScore now considers Twitter an instant messaging tool. Interesting. And they show over a million uniques for February 2007. I wonder what the number is for March when SXSW was active and was pimping Twitter hard.
• Lastly, comScore does not track Google IM so that is not included. I would imagine they would be in or close to the Top-10.

Source: comScore
*Unique visitors aged 15+, excludes searches from public computers such as internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs. Also, comScore noted: "Please note that AIM.com/AIM App refers to the combined usage of the stand-alone AIM application, plus visitation to the AIM.com website. AOL Instant Message refers to the IM service available to AOL subscribers. These numbers cannot be combined, since users of both applications would be double-counted."