Ordinarily, I only talk about things on this blog that I like. When I come across a cool video, a nifty web utility, or a slick piece of software, I like to talk about how great it is. I don’t usually complain about something I encounter, unless it’s something that means a lot to me.

That said; I don’t really care for Meebo Rooms.

Granted, I don’t have to care about Meebo Rooms. I can just leave it there, down on the bottom of my Meebo chat screen, and ignore the functionality completely. But it just seems so anti-web 2.0, there’s just something about it I feel compelled to comment on. I don’t really know how to explain it. Or, maybe I do.

Consider Twitter. Twitter is the direction the web is moving these days: dispersion. Each person exists in their own little world, and content is brought to them via RSS, SMS, IM, email, etc. Friends create content, and the content is distributed to each connected member’s miniature universe via the various channels of the internet. The web world is dispersed, and that’s how everything is moving.

Chat rooms — and especially video chat rooms, like Meebo Rooms — are not web 2.0. They are web 1.0. They are a part of the 90s (well, video isn’t, honestly, but the rest of my point stands). Gathering people in one place to interact isn’t how things are done these days. And that’s part of why I don’t like Meebo Rooms. It’s anti-web 2.0.

Plus, all it’s managed to do is make an already somewhat slow-moving system move even slower. Slow to the point that all day today, every time I have received an IM from somebody on one service, two or more of my other IM services automagically disconnect. It’s extremely irritating, especially when I have multiple conversations going on multiple channels. I expect that to get cleared up as things get more stable, but since it’s occurring due to the implementation of a whole new set of features that I don’t want, it’s a bit frustrating.

Somebody out there must like the new Rooms, right?