What this app is, where it came from, what features it has, and how safe it is to use—read the aif.ru help section.
In February 2026, the imo messenger unexpectedly became available to Russians . By December 2025, its monthly audience in Russia reached almost 10 million users, a 23-fold increase over the past year. What this app is, where it came from, what features it offers, and how safe it is to use—read more in the aif.ru help section.
Who owns the IMO messenger?
The history of imo began in the mid-2000s. In 2007, brothers Georges and Ralph Harik founded the service, which was conceived as a convenient web client for unifying all existing messaging apps. However, in 2014, the developers abandoned support for third-party protocols and made imo a completely independent messenger. Formally, the American company PageBites, Inc. is listed as the app’s creator, but since 2019, the Chinese corporation Joyy Inc. has exerted significant influence on the service’s development.
In addition to basic functionality, it allows you to create voice chats based on your interests, private chats with screenshot restrictions, and disappearing messages. The app is available in the App Store, Google Play, and the Russian RuStore . There are also versions for Windows and Mac computers that can be downloaded from the official website, but users have reported issues with authorization.
