"Meebo Messenger (shutting down July 11th, 2012) Downloading chat logs: We have created a page where you can download your chat log history at https://www.meebo.com/chatlog.... This page will no longer be available after July 11th, 2012." - Sir Shuping is just sir from Bookmarklet

There's gonna be a lot of libraries scrambling around this summer to find an alternative chat system. - Stephen le Francoeur

Blargh. I totally called this. - Soup in a TARDIS

yep. I'm thinking the gchat widget just because it will be the easiest. I don't know what else is out there that's still free anymore. - Sir Shuping is just sir

Which was probably Google's objective to start with. - Soup in a TARDIS

Fuuuuuuu..... - Chelle Chelle Ro Ro

^^^^^^THIS - Catherine Pellegrino from iPod

I listed a couple meebo alternatives here http://lisnews.org/meebo_m... - aarontay

Meebo via https was the best way around my company's firewall, other chat clients were blocked. It was their best (and really only) product, and Google destroys it. :-( - Nils Sandin

Found alternative at imo.im - Nils Sandin

thanks Nils, imo.im looks interesting the only thing that I'm not seeing right off hand is an embeddable widget, like what meebo/gtalk have, so that folks don't have to sign in to chat with people. - Sir Shuping is just sir

I've been playing around with the Google Talk gadget (#3 under "Get Started with the Google Talk Gadget" here: http://www.google.com/talk...) and not having a whole lot of luck, but I demonstrably do not know what I'm doing. I'm thinking Libraryh3lp is going to get slammed over the course of the next month. - Catherine Pellegrino

try this one instead: http://www.google.com/talk... it gives a bit more code to play with. and yeah i'm wondering if libraryh3lp will be able to handle the influx. we're looking at it, provided we can get the money - Sir Shuping is just sir

Thank you, Shuping! I can get that one to embed, but not to chat. Does anyone know of a library who's actually using Google Talk for their chat widgets, so I can look to see how they do it? - Catherine Pellegrino

We'll have to find an alternative, too - will let you all know what we go with. - Rachel Walden

there's a gchat widget? hmmm....sounds like Springshare needs to come up with a chat option :) - ~Courtney F

They're working on it, but it's not quite ready yet: http://help.springshare.com/content... I just greeted my director, back from a long weekend off, with "so, do you think we could find an extra $240/year hanging around anywhere?" - Catherine Pellegrino

huh....I found another library that has the gchat widget but it does the same thing as this one does. crap....that doesn't work. - Sir Shuping is just sir

I remember meebo. I liked it because you could use all chat programs together. - Trish R

just looked zoho has a chat feature that's easy to set up and customize: https://chat.zoho.com/login... - Sir Shuping is just sir

does anybody know of a replacement for the Meebo functionality of being able to use multiple IM services in one interface? i have friends/colleagues who use various IM services - AIM, Yahoo or FB chat. having those all in one place was perfect. - Christa

I don't know of a web-based one, but Pidgin (Windows) and Adium (OS X) are both solid, open-source clients that will handle multiple platforms -- including, um, Meebo. - Catherine Pellegrino

Courtney & Catherine: LibChat is very nearly ready. We're already running it internally, and we'll unveil it officially at ALA. If you're not going to be at ALA, let me know...we can likely get you a look. If either of you - or anyone else here - wants more info on LibChat, just DM me! - Laura H.

Thanks, Laura! I guess you folks now have a real incentive to get it up and running before July 11! :) - Catherine Pellegrino

I recommend Olark to everyone. Their website chat product is excellent. - Gershbec

desktop at MPOW is a bitch, since we aren't allowed to download our own software. here's some web based options, for what i was asking for. http://www.ghacks.net/2012... - Christa

has anyone looked at eBuddy? it has a widget - http://www.ebuddy.com/in_your... EDIT: oh wait, i think people have to log in in some way? - Christa

We switched to libraryh3lp a while back, but we bridge in our IM accounts and still use Meebo in our databases. I guess we have to take a look at LibChat and others! I will be at ALA, so I guess I need to come to the booth. - kaijsa

Honestly, even if we do manage to get Google Talk to work, I may advocate for going with LibraryH3lp or LibChat with my boss. Even in our budget circumstances, I think we can find $240/year to pay for a core service, and there's a substantive difference to your relationship with a vendor when you're actually *paying* said vendor for what they're providing. (Also, I kinda-sorta know Pam Sessoms and she's good people. As are the folks at Springshare, of course.) - Catherine Pellegrino

Catherine, I totally agree with everything you said and I am much more satisfied with our LibraryH3lp service than I ever was with Meebo--totally worth the very reasonable price! Pam has been excellent help when we've needed it. - kaijsa

We're with LibraryH3lp (were previously with Meebo) and have found it to be a fantastic service with fantastic support. (Some upgrade issues but I think those are basically over and did I mention the seriously outstanding support?) - Deborah Fitchett

libraryh3lp just posted about the meebo shutdown with some good info (more than "buy us") and actual recommendations of products: http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2012... nothing really that hasn't already been said here, but a well written post - Sir Shuping is just sir

Looks like Mosio also announcing webchat http://www.textalibrarian.com/press-l... - Suddenly so many competitors to libraryh3lp , Questionpoint etc.. - aarontay

Laura, that's good news. We're looking seriously at LibChat and h3lp, but were concerned that LibChat wasn't on the Springshare site anywhere. We really don;t want to do just a single IM requiring students to have a particular account, so Gtalk, AIM, etc were just plain out for us. - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

2 big questions we have right now: (a) what will allow operators to have & log in to 2 identities at once (self and refdesk) (b) do any of these play nicely with pidgin, or another aggregator? - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

LibraryH3lp will allow multiple queues, so I can be monitoring my own individual widget and at the same time an "engineering" widget and the general "whoever picks up first" widget. It works fine with Pidgin (though we use the webchat interface anyway because if you want to transfer chats you need to login via webchat anyway). - Deborah Fitchett

anyone tried out chatwing http://chatwing.com/? just saw it mentioned on a list - Sir Shuping is just sir

Chatwing looks like just a chatroom - we used a chatroom once upon a time which worked okay for low-volume virtual reference, but once you start getting a couple of questions at a time it's confusing. May also discourage some users/types of questions needing privacy. Also apparently it filters URLs, which makes it hard for users to say "I'm at this page and don't know what to do next" (though maybe the urls are viewable by logged in admins and just not by other users?) And finally, users can't just type-and-go, they have to login - you can login as a guest, but it's extra steps which we found makes a surprisingly big barrier. - Deborah Fitchett

Anyone try Digsby? It looks promising. Well, a little silly, but free and easy. - barbara fister

There was an issue with Digsby from a few years ago. I haven't kept up with the problem to know what if anything changed. http://download.cnet.com/8301-20... - Stephen le Francoeur

Thanks. It doesn't appear to be what we want anyway - unless I'm doing something wrong, it only works for patrons who have it installed. Fail. (Also won't show up on iphone; maybe uses flash?) - barbara fister

any reason why why we would want to use the webchatter (is that what its called?) commercial library h3lp instead of library h3lp itself? (its freaking expensive though) - RudĩϐЯaЯïan

Reviving this thread because I'm starting to do some serious research into alternatives. The folks behind LibraryH3lp also make a product called MyCustomerCloud (http://mycustomercloud.com), which appears to be geared more toward businesses than libraries, but apparently uses the same software as LibraryH3lp. The key difference is that MyCustomerCloud uses per-chat pricing: $0.20/chat. At that rate, our chat volume from last year would have cost us $40. We're looking at this option very seriously. - Catherine Pellegrino

I'm sure I don't need to tell you this... but you'll want to run the numbers on a "worst-case scenario" in which your chat volume soars. As long as that's still within your budget, go for it. - RepoRat

Oh yeah, I know - that is definitely a possibility. But for our chat volume to soar to the level of the $240 we'd pay for LibraryH3lp, it would have to increase by a factor of 6. Without our realizing it. :) - Catherine Pellegrino

... unlikely at best. Carry on! - RepoRat