First Look at Meebo Killer Wablet

I’ve been testing startup Web IM service Wablet for a while now. Wablet currently connects to Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ, and AOL Instant Messenger, plus its own network. Despite a few bugs to fix in alpha, this thing looks like it’ll do exactly what TechCrunch says it will: rock Web IM. Read on to see how.

Throughout the testing period so far, Wablet CEO David Foote has been very receptive to suggestions and responsive to bug reports. Improvements have been constant; the Wablet I’m trying right now is a vast improvement over the one I first saw months ago (and even then, I said it would blow Meebo away). Of course, there are still some bugs (For instance, in the chat window above, David’s business persona should not say “In a Relationship”, no matter how gorgeous his Filipina girlfriend is.), but that’s what alpha is for.

Occasional connection issues aside, the chat experience itself is remarkably smooth: left-click menus are getting richer, message notifications are informative instead of jarring, and the window-filling animated comic-style winks will soon have audio. The experience very much mimics that of a desktop chat client, except it’s all browser-based. Although Wablet’s Flash interface is fancier than Meebo’s Ajax interface, what really sets Wablet apart is identity management. Wablet lets you show the world every side of you by integrating three key features.

1) Personas — You dress differently for a bar and a boardroom, and your IM presence should be no different. Wablet users can customize social or business personas for use with different contacts. You can show your business persona with your professional details to potential business partners, and your social persona with your romantic status to potential bed partners.

2) Badges — By temporarily placing simple verification codes, Wablet users can attach their social media presences to their Wablet accounts, and choose which of those presences to display on different personas. You can link to your long LinkedIn resume in your business persona, and your MySpace babe collection in your social persona. Wablet currently provides badges for Bebo, Faceparty, iKarma, LinkedIn, MySpace, Xanga, Yahoo! 360°, YouTube, Hi5, TagWorld, Amazon, Cnet, Ebay, Bolt, Passado, Yeda, and Bloglines.

3) Ratings — The positive version of AOL IM’s warning system, Wablet’s rating system lets you give chatmates thumbs-ups or thumbs-downs, with attached reviews. Ratings are per-persona; you could earn a high rating on your professional persona if you make profitable deals, and a high rating on your social persona if you make people smile.

Of course, richer identity management in the context of chat means easier introductions and better interruption management. Anonymous trolls will hate Wablet.

Wablet also supports tagging. With IM’s growing importance as a business tool, tagging for conversations and contacts is great for managing ever-growing buddy lists and ever-more-useful recorded chats. It’s still limited to one tag per convo or contact; being accustomed to multifaceted relationships and multithreaded chats, I could use more.

I’d also like more customization options for my widgets; the presets look great, but I might stick a lot of these things in weird places. Multi-IM contact lists can get huge; I’d like an easy way to sort contacts, possibly through the top menu at first and drag-and-drop later on.

Taken individually, these concepts are nothing new. Creatively integrate them into chat, and suddenly a kid’s toy turns into an identity management platform — “Caller ID for the Web”, as David puts it. In the coming weeks, expect more features you never expected would be so great in chat.

If you can catch me online in the Wablet widget below, chat me up and try the animated winks. Even with no audio yet, they’re a riot.

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