Meebo Me: item 9

With a little help from my friends, I was able to get the meebo widget onto my blog sidebar. It was not very obvious.

I've only had one personal experience with IM and it was so overwhelming, that I don't ever really want to do it again. Bing Bing Bing... It was impossible to keep up with the speeds while trying to decipher the language! Know wonder our teens can't communicate in complete sentences anymore...not to mention accurate spelling... but I digress.

However, it was much more effective than trading emails ; much more similar to a phone conversation. So I absolutely understand appeal. The wonder of Meebo is that it collects all the various providers through one simple gateway, of sorts. Then you don't need to have an ID for each of the different ones to be able to communicate with everyone, or wonder who's currently on where.

As for library applications, it would be very useful for the patrons to have automatic electronic access to us for reference needs, but it would require that a *very* skilled someone was monitoring it at all times. This person would need to be able to handle multiple conversation threads at one time, and they would need to be able to keep up with the constant 'binging', without going nuts.

As an inter-staff communication tool, I'm not sure if it could be used on shared computers. I suppose the Meebo would only allow one person to access the program at once. But for those with a dedicated computer, it would be a very quick way of connecting across the system.