Thursday, January 18, 2007

Instant Messenger (IM) frenzy

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I would never give up IM in the workplace and for the last 5 years or so i have had access to a corporate IM client (Reuters Instant Messenger) that we all use as well as commercial IM clients, GoogleTalk (on mobile as well), Skype and Yahoo!. I use IM commonly to not only collaborate with my coworkers but also to chat with clients. The commercial version that i use most with clients is still Yahoo!

IM can be a great tool but it can also be distracting and a time waster if not managed properly. I however tend to find that in the business world people are respectful of your time and keep the chatter to a minimum.

Well, i certainly wasn't looking to add anymore to that list, but last week i finally had to cave in and added yet another I service, AOL because some new colleagues are using that IM client.

It was the last straw. i just couldn't take opening up multiple IM clients and even worse, putting them all on 'away' or 'on the phone' during my work day. A productivity tool gone bad. There are various applications that attempt to solved this problem and i have looked at them before but now was the time to try something out.

Today Meebo popped into my attention zone twice, first in my inbox with an invitation to an upcoming lunch 2.0 event and then on TechCrunch announcing new funding so i decided to give them a try. So now all my IM clients (minus Skype) are all in one IM browser based client that i can use from any computer. Hope it works out like i want it to.

I am also testing out the embedded site feature- on the right side of my blog site labeled 'Ping Me'- go ahead try it- if Meebo is as easy as it seems and i am online i might just reply!

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