I’d heard of Meebo a few months ago, and, like most web services of interest, I sign up, only to use the service for a few weeks to try it out, and only to forego using it continually either for something a little different, or because it really doesn’t serve a need I have. Meebo was like that at the beginning. Essentially, it’s a web-based Instant Messenger that interfaces with a variety of other IM clients, like MSN, Google, Yahoo, etc. It is useful, but I’d gotten away from IM’ing, so I hadn’t used it much.

Enter Meebo Rooms. Meebo Rooms are easily embeddable, public or private, chat rooms. There’s a variety of public rooms to pick from, or you can just add an “I’m Awesome” chat room to your own site. As for me, I created one for my church website for visitors to ask questions. Of course, one of the staff members this morning created a role in the chat room, pretended to be a visitor interested in the church, and played me for awhile, but I eventually caught on, even though he did do a good job of covering his tracks. He’s forever lost the engraved pens I was going to get him for Christmas. Or receiving any Photoshop help. Or promotion of his events.