I added the MeeboMe widget to my blog a week ago based on this post by Charlie.  I’m constantly trying to find new ways to open up dialogue with my readers, so I thought this would be a good solution.  It turns out that Charlie’s analysis nailed it: great concept, but the IMs need to go to a standard IM client, not a browser.

To resolve this limitation I setup my Gaim logon to my Meebo account via Jabber, but unfortunately Meebo implemented the Jabber protocol in such a way that every visitor to my site needed to ask my permission to be a member of my buddy list. I got about 8 buddy list request every hour.  Needless to say, that wasn’t a sustainable solution.

I did have a few interesting conversations with my readers through my MeeboMe widget, so I was hesitant to get rid of it, but in the end I removed it because I couldn’t get over IMing in a browser window.