If you have visited TechCrunch today, you likely noticed the Meebo chat integration in the page footer. The Meebo bar allows users to connect via Facebook, AIM, and other popular clients. It also acts as a carriage for rich ad-units (similar to VideoEgg’s roll-over ads).

I accidentally happened upon a different, equally interesting component of the Meebo integration: you can share images and content directly onto Twitter, Facebook, email and instant messaging. Simply hover over an image and then drag it into the header’s drop down icons. Very slick and an obvious value-add for the publisher: one click viral promotion.

Facebook uses the “Facebook Share” functionality to post to the feed (I imagine Facebook Connect would be the next version).

When posting to Twitter, it populates your Twitter.com speech box with a “short” URL (go.meebo.com/techcrunch.com/uid) and the article’s title (I imagine the next version will have a bitly-encoded URL):

http://go.meebo.com/techcrunch.com/8n Right Before Facebook Bought It, FriendFeed’s Real-Time Stream Saw A Flood Of Usage

Popularity: 6% [?]