A company called Meebo, a web chat company, has launched a service called MeeboMe which allows a website owner to install a chat widget onto their website and have one-and-one communication with their customers and visitors. For website owners, this is just another way to let your customers know that you're readily available to answer their questions and it makes for a better shopping experience - especially if you can get your answers instantly without having to wait for the website owner to check their email. IM'ing in business not exactly new, but it looks like something that could be more popular in the future. 
For those of you who don't know, "IM" stands for "Instant Messaging", something I'm familiar with but hardly use. When you IM someone, a little box shows up on their computer when they're online immediately displaying your message to them. The reason I'm not into IM is because I just don't want to have all these instant messages coming to me while I'm trying to concentrate and write. However, I may consider this option of communication on my jewelry website and have it available during a few hours of the day to test it out.
If anybody is currently using this as a way to communicate with their customers, please leave a comment and share your experience!
(Thanks to Thoughts in Time for sharing this!)
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