Adventures in Meebo!
It took me a few tries to get the widget going in Blogger, but there she is. -----> [sidebar]
This Meebo Widget (called "MeeboMe") can be embedded here in my Blog, somewhere else in your Blog, or on a web page. There is also a mobile edition! Pretty neat. I have a lot of IM experience but have never used Meebo. It's a pretty amazing tool-- especially for an institution (historical society, library, company) with multiple chat IDs on different platforms. From this one program, administrators can link a Facebook chat, a Google Talk, an AIM, a Yahoo!, a Windows Live, A Myspace, an ICQ, A Jabber, a Fixster, and about 40 more platforms that I have never even heard of. BAM! This is a great way to be able to connect to most users across all the most popular platforms that they might be running. I made a joke about archives-on-archives in my last entry-- similarly, this is a MEGACHAT.
Placement/location of this chat box for an archives might be a wee bit tricky. I probably would not place it on a Facebook page, because fewer patrons use Facebook than the World Wide Web when visiting institutions online, still. What do you do when you want to find information on a place? Most likely, you go to Google, and find the institutions website indirectly though a Google search (or one from another engine). In some cases, you might know the URL already, and could go directly to the site. Social Networking is up and coming as Socio-Business-Education networking, agreed, but there are still the residual Warehouse-of-Pictures-From-College-That-I-Don't-Want-My-Mom-to-See roots, which are, essentially, how Facebook got its start. It might be helpful to have a chat box on your institution's Facebook page, but maybe not the sole venue for IM. Additionally, a Facebook account can be pulled into Meebo anyways, right? This means your users chouls be able to contact you from Facebook even if someone is not actively navigating the page.
I like the idea of placing the chat box in the online catalog, which is probably the resource that remote users are most seeking from a library/institution website. This requires, of course, that there be an online catalog. The web page also seems to me to be a good spot. Can all three be done? If you've got the capability for Apps, the Mobile access is where it's at now and in the immediate foreseeable future. Go, Mobile Meebo!
Happy chatting, everyone!
Bee
Bee - Seems that you can be logged into your "regular" Meebo account and chat with patrons that way OR you can be logged into Facebook via Meebo and chat with Facebook users/patrons. You can't do both at the same time. A flaw, if you ask me, when you're wanting to use it for your archives (or library). ~Kathryn
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