Thing 50: Meebo MiniBar, Bookmarklet, and Messenger

MEEBO IS SHUTTING DOWN AS OF JULY 11, 2012

For details, see the Meebo support page for Meebo Discontinued Products

 

Meebo MiniBar and Bookmarklet

Librarians and archivists started using Meebo as an easy way for patrons to ask quick reference questions without having to worry about which instant messaging (IM) service they were using.  Now Meebo has become more “social,” allowing its users to check-in on their favorite websites and share what they find with their friends.

Meebo’s Check in feature lets you “check-in” to the sites you love across the web with the click of a button. It also makes it really easy to discover new sites that your friends or like-minded people are also checking-in to. Meebo allows users to check-in anywhere online, not just the sites of specific publishers. The Check in feature lets you to take Meebo with you across the web so that you can chat with your friends and check-in to any site right from the page.

The term “check-in” that Meebo is using is similar to the check-in feature on Foursquare, where you check-in to a physical location. There are options to share it with Facebook and Twitter friends or to other Meebo users.

When you check-in to a site, it is added to your Meebo Profile. If you weren’t aware of that, Meebo users can have their own profile pages that highlight their favorite sites. Link your Facebook or Twitter accounts to keep your friends up to date on your Meebo activity. When you’re on a site, you can mouse over the Meebo check- in button and see who has recently checked-in. Click their picture to visit their profile page. Follow people with similar interests to see what new sites they have found. Check-in often enough, and you will become a VIP on that site.

To enable check-ins, Meebo built a browser extension called the Meebo MiniBar. The bar is a feature that web site owners add to the bottom of their sites to let users chat and share their content. The MiniBar has been updated to include Meebo’s newest extenstion—the yellow Check In bookmarklet. Meebo is encouraging you to install the new bookmarklet extension so you can access their newest check-in features.

Eric Eldon on TechCrunch (see link below in the Resources section) writes, “After that, you can look at the new site to see how many people are clicking through based on your share. You can also see how many people are following and how many people you’re following. There’s also a history of everything you’ve shared. And if you follow friends on the service, you’ll be able to see their scores and compare yourselves to them.”

Eldon continues, “The big plan here is for Meebo to become more of a central social repository for all the things you’re sharing across the web. You’d still use Facebook and/or Twitter as normal, but this site will help you track how much people actually look at what you’re sharing. It’s sort of like how web sites use Google Analytics, but for individual users in social services.”

If you don’t already have a Meebo account from Thing 2, follow the link above to the Meebo MiniBar, create an account, and visit the download page. Or, once you are signed in, click Get the bookmarklet and then drag the bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark bar.

Classic Meebo Messenger

Maybe you love the idea of the Meebo bookmarket for your personal use but just want the classic Meebo Messenger for your archives reference. Having trouble finding it?

To find the classic Meebo Messenger:

• Go to meebo.com/messenger, log-in, and start chatting.
• If you use the Meebo Notifier, it still takes you directly to Meebo Messenger.
• From the Meebo homepage:
  • Logged in to Meebo? Click on the button “Looking for the Meebo Messenger?” located at the bottom right under “Recommended People.”

• Logged out of Meebo? Click on the button “Looking for the Meebo Messenger?” directly under the “Sign In” box on the Meebo homepage.

Resources

• Meebo Support: Creating a Public Profile
• Meebo Support: Meebo Bookmarklet
• Meebo Support: Meebo Check-ins FAQs
• Meebo Support: Your Home Page
• “Meebo’s MiniBar offers a new take on website check ins” article on SocialBeat (November 14, 2010)
• “Raid The MiniBar: Meebo Gets Into The Site Check-In Game. But Don’t Call It A Game,” by MG Siegler, on Tech Crunch (November 14, 2010)
• “Chat Service Meebo Launches New Version Of Site Designed Around Competitive Sharing (!),” by Eric Eldon, on TechCrunch (December 13, 2011)
• “Meebo bookmarklet” video on YouTube (September 28, 2011).