Browser-based chat champ Meebo recently introduced its new Community IM service. Designed for social networking communities, the taskbar-like interface across the bottom of the browser window will be instantly recognizable to Facebook users.

Buddy List on PopSugar:

IM conversation on Flixster:

This kind of service should be easily adaptable to a library environment. Instead of showing which "Buddies" are currently online, which on sites like Flixster refers to a user's Friends or Contacts within the network, a library's implementation could show which Librarians are currently online and available to provide assistance. Something like this:

A re-imagined YLS Library website w/Community IM reference (click to enlarge):

A virtual reference implementation such as this might not fit into Meebo's immediate plans, but using Ajax and XMPP, couldn't a web developer with a lot of free time implement this kind of thing without Meebo? It would certainly be superior to the current MeeboMe widgets used by so many libraries, as Facebook style IM reference would require less screen real estate, would appear on every page of a site, and chat history/sessions would persist as a user navigated to other pages on the site.

Check out this video for a demo of what Flickr is doing with Meebo Community IM:

Meebo Community IM on Flickr from Meebo on Vimeo.

I've noticed a lot of my friends on Twitter locking their updates in recent days. From what I gather, the rationale behind these changes are logical and predictable: a desire for more privacy. Privacy from spam followers. Privacy from search engines. Privacy from co-workers/supervisors. Et cetera. Et cetera.

I'm currently weighing this question myself, but I'm sticking with the open model, at least for now. Why? Well, for one my supervisor is already following me on Twitter, so even if I locked updates, he'd still see everything. I have no desire to lock him out anyhow, as he and I have used Twitter on numerous occasions to communicate about work issues. It's actually been *gasp!* PRODUCTIVE. Of course, because my supervisor is following me on Twitter, I already know not to say things I wouldn't want the higher ups to see. Maybe that feels limiting at times, but it probably prevents me from saying things that would be unprofessional no matter who my audience was. Though in all fairness, even knowing my boss is watching hasn't prevented me from pushing the boundaries of appropriateness from time to time (*cough" RedDot *cough*).

As for spam followers, won't I still receive requests from those same bots? Won't I still have to go decline those requests? (I don't know the answer to that question. Could someone with locked updates answer that for me?) If so, that reminds me a lot of my current periodic maintenance of blocking the bots who are already following me.

In general, I'm still on board the open updates wagon because it helps me connect with new people. When I receive an email notification that I have a new follower, I always go to their profile to see who they are and if I want to follow them. If their updates are locked, and I have no way of knowing who they are, I'm not going to follow them. And so I assume the same is true for my updates. If people see me tweeting about open source software or libraries or movies, that might be a reason for them to follow me. And I'd like to encourage that kind of interaction. At least for now.

The recent trend of locked updates reminds of what happened on MySpace a year or two ago. At first, we all had public profiles, and every last dirty detail was out there for the world to see. Slowly, as more and more people realized there might be consequences to this sort of openness, people started to lock their profiles, making them visible only to friends. And then eventually most of us moved to Facebook anyway, a system that hides most of our information from the outside world by default (not that FB isn't without its own unique privacy problems).

Perhaps Twitter will eventually evolve into a similarly closed network. But if that happens, I hope Twitter adopts a setting similar to what Facebook has. That is, when someone with locked updates begins following my updates, I should have a window of time in which I can view their updates, too. That way I can determine whether or not I want to reciprocate and follow them. Otherwise I have often have no information to go on.

Yesterday's Boston Globe featured a column by Alex Beam expressing his reservations about Twitter:

You have heard about Twitter. Maybe. It's something other people do, mainly younger people. You subscribe to the service, then you can post little messages on people's cellphones, or on their instant message accounts. About nothing.

[...]

The perfect twitter is a lapidary techno-haiku: I send these pointless little messages, gobbling up Internet bandwidth for no reason. Because I am a twit . . . er.

I send pointless little messages
Originally uploaded by tomboone

In honor of Beam's article, I've created a blog badge for those of us who are the targets of his derision. Feel free to use the badge however you like. I have one in the sidebar of my page that links to my Twitter profile.

Many of you know I post to Twitter several times a day on average, but it took me several months of using (and more often NOT using) the site before I started to get anything out of it. Once I found a substantial number of people to follow (many of whom are fellow law librarians) and who followed me in return, however, the conversation took off. I am now in constant contact with librarians all over the country every single day.

I posted my own favorite Twitter experience as part of a comment to a post at Out of the Jungle about Beam's column:

A few weeks ago a librarian in Chicago Twittered that she was interested in an AALL session on empirical research. I replied to her -- via Twitter -- that I was also interested in this topic because I was working with such materials at work. Two days later, a librarian in LA who isn't even on Twitter asked me about my empirical research after she had a phone conversation the Chicago librarian. Minus Twitter, I wouldn't have made either of these valuable professional connections.

So I will continue to send pointless little messages.