Meebo, Online Instant Messenger, Review
September 20th, 2006 by Angsuman Chakraborty
I have been using Meebo, an AJAX based online instant messenger and website communicator, for quite sometime. This is a review of Meebo, what works and what doesn’t.
What’s good about Meebo?
Convenience - Meebo is a quick and simple way to connect to multiple Instant Messaging services from a single browser window. It supports AOL, Yahoo!, ICQ, Jabber, GTalk, MSN & its own MeeboMe service. I find it more convenient to use than Trillian.
MeeboMe - MeeboMe provides a simple way to chat with people on your site. I am using it on this site. You can chat with me anytime from my website when I am logged in Meebo. You will find the tool in my sidebar (scroll down). It also provides a simple way to view how many users are on your site at any time. You can also try to initiate a conversation with your site visitors, provided they look at the chat tool.
Multi-language support - Meebo is supported in several languages.
What Meebo needs to improve?
Speed - Often during the day (US Pacific Standard Time), I find Meebo to be rather slow. For example now I am waiting for at least 3-4 minutes for my authentication to be completed. It could be that the AJAX request is simply failing and it is waiting indefinitely. Re-clicking on the sign-on / login button doesn’t help. The only way to login in such cases is to refresh the page and then type the password again.
Passwords are not remembered in browser - This happens because Meebo uses AJAX to login instead of the standard form submission using POST. So your browser doesn’t realize that you are supplying your credentials (login & password) that it should give you an option to remember. This is a major irritant for me as I normally let my browser to remember the passwords for me.
Slows down Firefox to a crawl - Meebo significantly slows down Firefox as well as Internet Explorer. After sometime (with only Meebo running) everything slows down. Firefox consumes too much CPU and memory. This is one reason why I don’t remain logged in Meebo all the time.
IRC - Meebo doesn’t appear to support IRC. I think it will be a very good addition to Meebo.
In conclusion I think Meebo is moving in the right direction. However its services need to be improved upon as described above. I would also like to see a intranet version for corporations.
What I am not so sure is the revenue model of Meebo. I am assuming they will display advertisement in Meebo page or provide bots which allows you to purchase products and services.
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February 23rd, 2007 at 2:59 pm
I have a yahoo i.d and my parents will not let me download yahoo messenger. So I use http://www.meebo.com but most of the time the page has an error on it. So I wait anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours or just won’t work so I have to get on the next day. That really makes me angry.
March 27th, 2007 at 1:19 am
hii thanks for the great workk. keep it up. u bring a smile to my face- daily!
♥
March 27th, 2007 at 10:20 am
heyy
March 27th, 2007 at 10:21 am
wuddup
April 24th, 2007 at 1:56 am
hye mama
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:00 am
hi this is faisal khan here i want to say about meboo messanger it’s a very good messanger i use long time meboo but now i face some problem my IT department related issue here IT department very Strikly so that’s the reasone i don’t use meboo now a day’s but tell me you have easy way so tell me what i use meboo messanger because here meboo messanger it’s block.
June 25th, 2007 at 3:14 am
i cant get on meebo because the technitions have filtered it. does any one no any other way i can get out on messenger in school… please help?
July 19th, 2007 at 4:03 am
i think its a very good sight but its block on most of the computers so i dont really recament it to anyone
July 19th, 2007 at 4:05 am
ye does anyone no how to get on it with out the block ups comin up helpp!! cuz otherwise the computers r boring
November 1st, 2007 at 8:41 am
thank you
February 11th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
this is pissing me off! the school keeps blocking good programs and sites!
April 5th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I disagree with a lot of you. first, i\’m nine so don\’t cuss because your probably are about to when you hear my review. 0. zip. All people do is lie and spread rumors. I had a great time…… until…….. someone IMed me asking if I wanted to cyber love him! a random person! and i said you perv! and then he talked in public chat saying ewwwwwwwww! this nine year old\’s sick! turning it all around. last thing i said on there is
not to mention ALOT of people are young like me so who wants their kids harrassed like that??????????? HUH??????? none!
>:(
April 28th, 2008 at 11:50 am
hey! does anyone know how to go to a chat site? because all the other ones i usually go to are blocked… like… meebo, yahoo messenger… what else is blocked?
April 29th, 2008 at 8:48 am
what r u doing ??i got to go sssssssssssssssssoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo bye bye bye ?? what is your name hahahahahahaha??huh…………………………byebye bye bye