Pudding Media has announced its partnership with meebo—a website for instant messaging (IM)—to enable free voice calls for meebo's users.

The partnership is expected to deliver free voice chat to millions of instant messaging users through the meebo Platform. Pudding Media also informed about the launch of its partner program, and meebo joining as an inaugural partner in the program.

San Jose, California based Pudding Media has joined meebo Platform as an inaugural partner. “We are excited to join the meebo Platform as a step towards our goal of offering communications providers a chance to enhance voice calls for their users,” said Ariel Maislos, CEO and co-founder of Pudding Media, in a statement to the press.

Maislos also stated that, over the next few months, the company plans to expand the services, so that meebo’s users can choose to display Web pages, news, pictures and video clips based on the conversation.

“At meebo, our mission is to connect people live on the Web. The integration of Pudding Media into the meebo Platform makes it easy to enable our users to experience seamless voice chat with anyone on their buddy list," said Seth Sternberg, CEO and co-founder of meebo. “Pudding Media inside of meebo brings us one large step closer to becoming the Web's live interaction destination.”

Pudding Media’s new platform has combined traditional voice services with advertising. Maisalo explained that the Pudding Media platform allows any communications provider—Internet telephony service, mobile carrier and Web publisher—to offer new ad-supported voice services.

In addition, Pudding Media platform provides flexibility in targeting, placement and format of advertising. Maisalo informed that the platform supports both live real-time conversations and voice mail and messaging applications.

----------

Anshu Shrivastava is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.