And it definitely feels like an app, with chat bubbles and dialog boxes that fade out. While it may not have all the niceties of iChat or Adium, JiveTalk does let you send and receive Instant Messages with multiple buddies and it supports multiple accounts on AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, and Yahoo.

The lack of instant messaging has bothered many, including myself, particularly since as far as we can tell, there’s no technological reason that it shouldn’t be possible. And just to prove that point, there’ve already been several web-based IM clients launched for the iPhone. JiveTalk’s just in alpha, so there are plenty of improvements on the way, such as status messages, and buddy management capabilities. Of

Using JiveTalk is simple: fire up Safari on your iPhone and head by to iphone.beejive.com. And, better yet, filling in some of the gaps that Apple has left.

I’m still holding out hope that Apple will deliver an IM client down the road, but for the moment, JiveTalk looks like a good way to fill that niche.

As disappointed as many of us were with the announcement that fully fledged third-party apps wouldn’t be available on the iPhone, the fact remains that web developers are still plenty capable of creating great apps.

Original post by Dan Moren