IM remains the hot topic here at Library Laws. In recent weeks we've talked about Meebo, Plugoo, Pidgin, Adium and iChat AV. Well, there's a new player entering the field of IM clients: Mozilla. The folks responsible for the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird mail client have introduced Instantbird, an open-source, cross-platform, multi-protocol instant messaging client. Built on libpurple (the basis for both Pidgin and Adium), Instantbird is only on its first beta release (version 0.1) but already provides support for the AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, QQ, XMPP (aka Jabber) and Yahoo! networks. In addition, like other Mozilla applications, we can eventually expect a lot of user-created add-ons that will substantially increase the software's functionality.

This certainly makes my life more interesting, as I'm currently developing IM training and best practices for our reference librarians in using a multi-protocol client to monitor a virtual reference service. Originally, the plan was to recommend Pidgin for everyone, but in recent weeks a lot has happened to make this decision less certain. In addition to testing Instantbird on my own computers, I'm also analyzing the impact of Meebo's new Firefox sidebar add-on and the approaching release of Trillian Astra (including a Mac version). What should we be using? Trillian? Pidgin? Meebo? Hard to say, but at least the list of viable options is growing.