Here’s the big problem though; How can you get the best out of this application or that website if all of your friends don’t use them? Especially the hardest people to convert: Your real world friends and family. Take, for example, one of my favorite social news sites, mixx. mixx is a great place to submit articles, photos and videos of things you find interesting and share them with your friends. But only if your friends happen to also use mixx. Or another favorite application of mine, twitter. twitter allows you to instantly share information with friends, update your friends on what you’re currently doing or just share your thoughts. But, again, you can only update the people you know who are also twitter users. Ugh.

Every week, I see new and interesting web applications out there that I’d like to try. But more and more I just decide to pass on them. After all, how many times can I expect all of my friends to join me and test out a new site? There was a time I was inviting people to things all the time. And then dumping them after they got boring, leaving my friends in the lurch. So I stopped inviting people. My selfishness does have its limits, after all.

So there’s the problem. But what’s the solution? Well, there are several things that might help this, but they’re all a bit off. And I’m not here to solve the problems of the web. Just my problems. And I have a way to do this.

For the next week or so, I’ll be doing a series of posts here focusing on the tools that I use and love online. Unlike my previous series of web-related articles, I’ll be focusing specifically on the applications that require participation from your friends to get the best out of them. My end goal, of course, is to get all of my friends (online and off) to become one big, happy family. If that’s even remotely possible. And even if it’s not, I’m going to give it my damnedest. So, be on the lookout for said articles, and get ready to join me in my quest to get the best out of my personal relationships and the web. You know you want to. And even if you don’t, I’ll be embedding subliminal messages to make you. So there.

Like a lot of you reading this, I spend a great deal of time online. There are also times I need to be at computers other than my home PC. In order to best keep in touch with my friends, of both the virtual and real-world variety, I need applications that move beyond the desktop. I need applications that I can use anywhere. Which is why I use Meebo and Google Talk for Instant Messaging. Twitter, while not an Instant Messaging application, is another way to keep in contact with your friends and let them know what you’re up to.

Google Talk

Google Talk is the IM application that I use the most. As I discussed in part two of this series, it is automatically integrated into Gmail. Since I have a tab with Gmail in it open all day, this makes it incredibly easy for me to communicate with my friends. It also always you to chat while not affecting the emails in the background, allowing you to browse email while chatting. It’s multi-tasking made easy. Check out this screen-shot.

See what I mean? Nice and unobtrusive. Easy to use and intuitive. But, if you want to use Google Talk over the web, without installing a desktop client (which Google Talk also has for those of you who prefer it), you need to do one of two things.
1. Get Gmail and use Gtalk from within it.
2. Install the Firefox extension that allows you to use it from the sidebar. This, of course means that you need to be using the Firefox web browser.
If neither of these options work for you, Google Talk probably isn’t right for you. Sure, as I said, they have a desktop client, but there are far better desktop clients out there. Google Talk excels for it’s ease of use within Gmail. When it moves to the desktop, it just can’t compete with other IM applications (I prefer Pidgin and Trillian).

It is important to note one thing, though. Google Talk will only allow you to chat with people who also have Google Talk, or folks who use AOL Instant Messanger (AIM). If your friends are on other networks, like MSN or Yahoo, Google Talk isn’t for you. Which is where Meebo comes into play. More on that in a second.

Useful Links:
Gmail
Google Talk Sidebar for Firefox
Google Talk Desktop Application (Desktop IM – Works with Google Talk and AIM)
Trillian (Desktop IM – Works with all IM platforms)
Pidgin (Desktop IM – Works with all IM platforms)

Meebo

Meebo is an online Instant Messaging application that has been around for close to three years. It has continued to rise in popularity, and now sends over 100 Million IMs a day between its users. Whereas Google Talk only allows you to chat with other Google Talk members or AIM members, Meebo allows you to talk to everyone who uses IM. It supports AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and Jabber. You can create an account at their site and easily add all of your friends from across every IM network. The site will remember you, and whenever you sign in, it will sign you in to all the networks in which you participate. Here’s a screenshot of Meebo’s sign-in page to show you what I mean.

Basically, I only use Meebo when I need to chat with someone who isn’t on AIM or Google Talk. This isn’t often.

Here are the main two reasons I only use Meebo when I have to, and not all the time.
1. You have to keep the site open to chat. If you use Firefox, this means you have to have a tab with Meebo open in it if you want to pop back and forth between your IM and web-browsing.
2. Even if you install the Firefox Sidebar extension, which allows you to open Meebo in your sidebar, you STILL have to have Meebo open in a tab.

It’s for those reasons that I only use Meebo once in a blue moon. It’s nice to have for the odd times I want to chat with a friend of mine who uses MSN or Yahoo, but it’s not something I use on a regular basis. Still, it is handy to have it there when I need it. It still fills that need to have a way to chat with friends online, without downloading and installing an IM program.

Useful Links:
Meebo
Meebo Sidebar extension for Firefox

Twitter

Now that I’ve discussed the two online IM programs that I think make the most sense, I want to spend a little time on a very popular web application called Twitter. It may not be considered an Instant Messanger, per se, but it does a lot of the same things. At its core, Twitter is a way to let your friends know what you’re up to at any given time, based on how often you update it. Here’s a screenshot to give you an idea of a Twitter page.

As you can see on my Twitter page, I use it to randomly give updates as to what I’m doing. Sometimes I’ll update a few times a day and sometimes I’ll go a day or so without updating at all. My friends, both real and cyber, can add me on Twitter to see what I’m up to. Likewise, I can follow them to see what they are up to. In the main user page, you can see both your updates and your friends. From that screen you can also reply to any updates that people add, in effect using it as an IM tool.

The benefits of Twitter aren’t entirely clear at first, but it can be used for a lot of different things. For one thing, you can get a Twitter badge to put in the sidebar of your blog (if you have one) to update your readers on what you’re doing. Or, you don’t have to use it to update your activities at all. You could use it to enter your random thoughts and put it in your sidebar as “Random Thoughts”. Heck, you could use it to send updates of any type you like. Additionally, building on the first part of this series (Feed your Heed), your Twitter page has an RSS feed that your friends can subscribe to, even if they don’t want to join Twitter themselves. Then they can follow your hijinks across the web from within their feed reader.

There are also many tools that let you update Twitter from within your browser (if you use Firefox, that is). There are a myriad of extensions that allow you to update twitter and, if you want to, follow Twitter updates from your friends in the sidebar. This makes using Twitter a snap.

Useful Links:
Twitter
Twitter extensions for Firefox
60 Twitter Tools

Summary

As you can see, there are several ways to keep in touch with your friends online that don’t require installation of desktop clients. Whether you choose to use Google Talk, Meebo or Twitter, you should easily be able to meet whatever IM needs you have, from anywhere in the world. Well, anywhere there’s a computer with internet access that is. Which, lately, seems to be almost everywhere.

If you want to add me as a friend on Twitter, my name is Honest_Ape. Here’s a link to my Twitter page.
If you want to add me as a friend on Google Talk or Meebo, my Gtalk account name is Truthfulprimate.

And seriously, who wouldn’t want to be my friend?

Be sure to read the previous article in this series: Email For Everyone