IMing

I have had experience with IMing at 2 other places: Rockwell Automation as an employee and the University of Washington as a distance Library student.

My experience with IMing at Rockwell was very positive. If I had a quick question for any of the other admins in our group, no matter where they were physically, I could just pop them a note. I didn't have to worry whether they were on the phone with a customer or distributor, or if they were away from their desk momentarily. We didn't even always stick to business matters, sometimes joking around.

My experience IMing using MSN Messenger at the University of Washington was not nearly so positive. I could see if others in my cohort were also online, but when I went to pop them a message, five minutes later I would get a message saying that the message wasn't sent since I wasn't logged on. It would do this even if I had checked to make sure that yes, I was logged on. I would then have to logon and re-type and re-send the message. Many times I would go through this and start a conversation, but then I would get logged off again. It was VERY frustrating. By the end of the program when I was working on a group projecs and someone wanted to IM, I would always push the group to chat instead, as it was much more stable.

I haven't tried Meebo yet, but the concept is great! It totally fills a need!