Many of you must be familiar with meebo, the web-based IM service that brings together four of the bigger names of the IM stage: AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and MSN's Web Messenger alongside its very own.

In case you were following this via Facebook or other similar social networks that have adopted the meebo widgets, it's worth knowing that the user numbers have increased to the point of almost 25 million unique visitors per month, according to the chart on the left, based on internal company data that Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch.com has posted.

October 2007 was the last month charter by comScore, but the numbers show just how important careful strategy planning is. When the executive team stepped their feet down and said that widgets was the way to go, it must have been one of the most inspirational moments in the history of the company, as 6.3 million people in the United States engaged with meebo have used them for instant messaging instead of accessing the site, the latter being the target of just a little over 1.2 million users.

Worldwide, the percentages stay pretty much the same, except for the higher number of visitors for each: 19.8 million using the widgets and only 4.3 million choosing the site over them. That's an 84 percent accessibility through the gadgets in the U.S. and 82 percent worldwide. Strangely enough, Erick Schonfeld observed that the site still gets higher levels of active engagement than the other option, the widgets. Out of the 150 million IMs that it sees a day only 20 million are generated in Meebo Rooms.

Meebo is such a good example of the way the little chat gadgets can mean the turning point a company's future that it "is a text-book case of how to build a brand (and traffic) with widgets on other sites," as Schonfeld said. Nevertheless it is still arguable whether it is the best example of monetization of the product, no moves being made so far in that direction. Then again, Web 2.0 is all about the user database and level of trust, not about the money. That will probably follow when somebody (perhaps Facebook?) buys it.