OK I am very happy this morning. On Saturday Billy and I took the train down the White Plains. We always sit in facing seats to buy a little space. This means that usually there's another set of facing seats across the aisle from us. On the weekends, this means that the space usually becomes filled with a group of very excited travelers. This Saturday was no dif.

A group of girls landed in the seats across the aisle. Soon they were yacking up a subject I am interested in: Social Websites. One of their comments really caught my interest. "I think it's run in a little safer way."

"Excuse me? Which service are ya'll discussing?"

"Facebook," they replied.

"Ah, I thought so. I just found out about Facebook. I've signed up but I've not done anything with it ... I also have a MySpace but MySpace is just so full of trash."

They were quick to agree.

So then I started asking them about ... the other sites I've bumped into.

"Have you played with Xanga?"

"Yeah but ... (boring)"

"Yeah I have to agree ... for some reason things just aren't clicking as well there."

"What about Imeem?"

Looks of total confusion ...

"Well it's sort of like Facebook ... full of people about ya'll's age but no one is really talking to anybody new ... they only seem to talk to people they know in Real Life. ... but ... what about 43things? Have ya'll played with it?"

More looks of confusion. "What's that?"

Oh well ... hmm it's a kind of goal-setting site. People are really open there and talk rather freely. It's very easy to have great discussions there. And it has several neighboring sites ... one is 43places ... where people talk about where they've been and where they want to go ... And then there's 43people because as you go around between the 43things and 43places, you meet people that you think ... 'Hey, I'd like to meet them in Real Life.' ... I find it's lots of fun!"

They were saying that sounded like fun ...

"Ok Ok ... let me ask ya'll this. Do ya'll use meebo?"

More looks of total confusion.

"oh oh ya'll this is the coolest thing. You know how you have friends who use Yahoo chat, and MSN chat, and AIM, etc? ... and it's a pain ... right?"

Enthusiastic statements of agreement went up.

"Alright meebo let's you chat with everybody on all of those services in one place with one tool."

They about fell out of their seats ... "How do you spell meebo?"

And so I told them ... "And ... Ya'll that's just the beginning. You know how you have a MySpace and at Xanga that you don't really use but ... Well you can go to meebome and get a little bit of code to put on those pages. You just copy and paste it. The code creates little chat boxes.

Now, here's the part that's off the charts. You don't have to sit there on that page waiting for someone to come by and chat with you. You just go off and leave the box out there on the web. When someone stumbles onto that page and wants to chat, they just send you a message. Then a chat box pops open in your meebo ... and you talk with them ... right there in meebo. You don't even have to have your MySpace page open. It works with any site that lets you drop little scripts into it –like MySpace does."

That was it ... that was all they could stand.

"If you don't mind us asking ... How is it that you know about all these things?"

I laughed ... "I'm a geek from way back. I've been playing with computers for 20 years and with the Internet for about 10 years. Right now I'm writing. For the month of November I'm doing NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo. It's fun. Oh and I just volunteered to help with a web site re-do ... but I'm thinking I only want a small role ..."

Then I had to get off the train ... I think they were kind of relieved ;) I don't think they were prepared to have their cool conversation hi-jacked by a Grey Hare. Grey Hare's aren't suppose to know about cool Internet stuff ... especially not female Grey Hares ;-)

Anyway, I wasn't on chat all this weekend ... so I didn't know that meebo did some very beautiful and very useful upgrades sometime Friday until this morning. You should go look! .

Now ... in keeping with being a geek ... I have to tell ya'll something ... There is the simple fact that the meebo team is creating an exceptionally brilliant idea for just the right moment ... ... which one could say is just a brilliant business concept ... ... but brilliant business concepts fail all the time. ... One could say they are simply taking advantage of the social aspect of the Internet ... but sites fail all the time trying to capitalize on this Social Internet. ... So why is it that they are succeeding? Two things.

First: They understand that the stability and usability of their code IS a Social Event. Being socially flakey is the kiss of death on the Internet. Therefore ... any Internet code (site or tool) that is flake-y and or difficult to use is kissed by death. BUT meebo has been creating stable code. It is a stable chat tool. It started out plain and is beginning to put on a cooler wardrobe ... but ... its goal is stability before flash and their users know this and love this about them.

Second: They understand that they live in a social world. They are both social on the web AND off the web. meebo has a blog. They tell people about Team meebo. They tell the world about Team meebo's lunch, work space, travel-styles, etc. meebo has a community forum. meebo lets their users hang out and talk about willy-nilly and wiki-help stuff. They also arrange very simple meetups. For example, tomorrow morning, Tuesday, November 7, there will be one on the Caltrain's "Baby Bullet." You can read meebo's Blog entry: mobile meebo meetup tuesday!

AND TEAM MEEBO TALKS BACK !! Team meebo not only helps initiate topics for discussion ... they stay in the discussion. Team m not only provides space for their fans to initiate discussions ... they enter into the fans' discussions.

You know ... there's one last thing you should know about meebo ... it all runs inside a browser window. You don't have to download and install anything in order to chat.

Oh and ... I also placed a meebome chat window here: Talk to MarillaAnne. You're welcome to stop in and say hello.

Hmm so you might be wondering ... why did a conversation on a train with a bunch of maybe 20-something girls make me so happy? Because when I was younger, I loved meeting older people who could talk to me about my world. I always said to myself, "I want to be like that when I grow up." Saturday, I realized I'm becoming like that ... ... and I want to keep becoming like that.

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