Meebo Me Widget - A Review

Meebo Me Widget Review

Meebo Me is an ambitious widget from Web based IM service Meebo. Its purpose is simple and compelling: to allow users to embed private, one on one IM on their social networking site profile pages, blogs, or personal Web sites. While the publisher of a Meebo Me widget is required to register in order to configure their widget, visitors to the publisher’s page can chat with the widget owner without registering.

Another benefit to publishers of a Meebo Me widget is the ability for them to see when visitors are browsing their pages. Visitors without a Meebo account show up as guests, but if the visitor has a Meebo account, the widget publisher can see their Meebo nicknames. In this sense, the Meebo Me widget functions as a sort of real time, albeit crude, stats package.

Because Meebo Me is a Web based service and not a desktop client, Meebo.com needs to be open on the widget publisher’s browser in order for people to chat through the widget.

Applications and Opportunity

While several of the larger social networking services host their own IM services, there are literally thousands of community oriented sites without this functionality, and who could stand to benefit from enabling it. If Meebo Me could become the default IM infrastructure for these online communities, it would be a major coup, and would cement Meebo’s position as the primary Web based IM client.

From an online community owner perspective, there are plenty of reasons to promote the Meebo Me widget. While there are clear examples of well funded community sites with the resources to build their own IM service, there are many more high traffic communities run by very small teams, who could stand to benefit from increased lateral communication between their site users.

So there are two primary ways that the Meebo Me widget could take off; 1) through the viral adoption of users who see the Meebo Me widget on their friends’ pages and want it for their own page; and 2) through the promotion of the Meebo Me widget by community Web site owners wishing to make their site better. And of course, these two paths to success are not mutually exclusive.

To sum up this section, The Meebo Me widget is not just another example of folks jumping on the widget bandwagon. This is a needed piece of functionality with potentially huge adoption, and ready made markets with a real need for this type of service.

Configuration

Configuration of the Meebo Me widget is a breeze. The full configuration process is only three short screens, and there is very little that is confusing. Three sizes of widgets are offered, and the smallest size (160 X 250) fits nicely in the narrowest of sidebars. I like how the registration process is built seamlessly into the widget configuration process – no email confirmation is required to launch your widget. I also think that it was a wise move to set up a separate domain just for the widget, as opposed to burying it in the Meebo.com domain.

Testing

I had no problems implementing the Meebo Me widget on MySpace, Blogger, or TypePad. Because the Meebo Me widget is a fixed width widget with multiple width options, there were no formatting issues as long as you choose the right width. Because it is a Flash based widget and not a script, it should work fine on sites that allow html.

Editorial

I love the concept of the Meebo Me widget and as the administrator of an online community, could immediately see its value for my user base.  This is one of the few widgets that I've read about that caused me to drop what was doing in order to try it out. 

However, I have one serious concern with this widget. This concern does not reflect any failing of the Meebo team in implementation, but is related to Meebo’s role as a Web based service. 

The problem that I have with this widget is that keeping a browser window open with Meebo.com is a real hassle, and seems to impact the performance of my browser. This is a big deal for folks that are doing most of their work through their browser – a sluggish browser can put a real dent in productivity. 

I have no idea if this issue will affect adoption of the Meebo Me widget by Meebo’s target market. But speaking strictly from my own personal experience, my usage pattern of the Meebo Me widget went from irritation with the subsequent sluggishness of my browser, to removing the widget entirely from my primary blog. While I still plan on promoting the widget to my community’s user base, my promotion will be somewhat more muted, and I will most likely provide a disclaimer that site performance may suffer.

Click through to write your own review of the Meebo Me widget.

 

 

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