What’s Next for Digsby

July 10, 2012 @ 6:15 pm EST · Filed under News

We apologize that it’s been awhile since we’ve been in touch! Digsby is privileged to have a passionate community and powerful group of users, and we wouldn’t be where we are today without you. We’re delighted to inform you that soon the Digsby platform will be open sourced, allowing you and others to build and evolve this great product.

What does this mean for me?

Once we release the open source version, your Digsby settings will now be stored locally on your computer, rather than being saved to the Digsby servers. Additionally, the Digsby widget will no longer be available, but you can still access all your favorite Digsby features through the application.

You can contribute! All users will have a place to share ideas, and our technically inclined users will have a chance to get their hands dirty to build out features and updates (as well as see some of the powerful behind-the-scenes frameworks that we’ve built to-date).

When will this process take place?

We will roll out the open-sourced version of Digsby on Github in the coming weeks. Look out for specific updates here on the blog.

As always, we want Digsby to continue to thrive and be your go-to tool for IM + Email + Social Networks, so we’re giving more power to the best folks we know who can make this a reality: you!

Digsby is my main IM client, mostly because it can handle every IM system protocol out there—AIM, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, you name it. Only Meebo offers more services, but, as a web-based app, it's somewhat limited compared with Digsby. The big players offer two services at the most—Yahoo and Live talk to each other, while Gmail's chat can handle AIM as well as its own. Digsby also does a great job of keeping you abreast of your social network feed, with tray icons and dedicated windows for each service, in which you can update your status. Its voice and video capability using TokBox is functional, but I tend to use Windows Live Messenger or Skype for that.

Users should be aware that Digsby now calls out all of its bundleware during the installation process, so install with caution if you don't want the Ask.com toolbar or the grid computing protocol. This is a marked improvement from when Digsby only allowed opting out after the program was installed, so we're more comfortable recommending the program once again.