I was reading something about SXSW (pet peeve: when “news” sites cover parties, festivals, concerts… you went out. That’s not news), and it turns out that there’s a SXSW meebo room.
So what’s a meebo room? (First off, what’s meebo? It’s a chat client that runs in your web browser, so you can check your MSN / AOL / ICQ / what-have-you. I am registered there but I have not used it a ton.) A meebo room is a group chat, with a media window. Any youtube link pasted into the conversation queues up in the media player and people can check it.
Are you already thinking what I’m thinking? Schedule an hour for you and your friends to get together, and start pasting youtube links in, and it’s like a virtual MP3 tennis with videos. Yes? No?
I’m actually not positive this would work right. For it to really match up with my vision, it has to run the same videos at the same time for everyone. (It looks like every user can start / stop the group media whenever they want.) It’s not fair if you’re watching your own videos (Counting Crows, let’s say) instead of being subjected to what I want you to watch (even if it’s Ween).
And it’s almost a complete waste for people in the same room as each other – they’d all need their own laptops to queue stuff up. Maybe we need some kind of youtube queueing app that users, in the same room or not, can add to a playlist. (Cratchit and I – mostly Cratchit – worked on an idea like this for MP3s a way, way long time ago.)
