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Meebo releases super-simple site chat

Rafe Needleman Former Editor at Large
Rafe Needleman reviews mobile apps and products for fun, and picks startups apart when he gets bored. He has evaluated thousands of new companies, most of which have since gone out of business.
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Rafe Needleman

The people who make the cool Web-based meta-IM service Meebo (it's like Trillian, but runs in a browser), has released MeeboMe, a chat widget you can embed on your Web site. [See News.com story.] It allows visitors to see your online state (if you're using Meebo) and chat with you in realtime. Here's a live demo:

You can also use it to monitor visitors to your page -- everybody who's got the widget showing will appear on your Meebo buddy list as a guest to your site.

MeeboMe wins the award for making the easiest to use chat plug-in (you only need to embed one line of code in your site), but it's not the only one. Stickam, for example, has a chat gizmo, and it also does video. And there are several products designed for commerce sites that let you add a "talk to me now" button. MeeboMe is also not a chat room. Users you're chatting with can't see each other, just you.

If you want to get in close touch with visitors to your site, blog, or your page on eBay, MySpace or any other service, it's certainly worth experimenting with.