Facebook Chat Launching
April 6th, 2008
Facebook Chat is currently being launched - it has been rolled out to the first networks this morning according to Inside Facebook. I previously reported on this and linked to a video which showed Facebook Chat in operation.
From the screenshots on Inside Facebook, it looks like a fairly simple browser-based IM client which works very similarly to Gmail Chat. There is a bit of convergence between Facebook and Gmail in that both try to build a browser-based IM system on existing social networks and both are planning or have implemented Jabber/XMPP.
It looks like a really nice way to communicate and quite a few people have said that this will encourage them to leave Facebook open all day. Chat API is set to be added in a future update to Facebook chat (applications can’t integrate with it yet).
I’d be really interested in hearing what people think of Facebook Chat when it’s rolled out to their account. I’m quite convinced that Facebook will become a major player in IM simply because of the quality of the friends list. But I could be wrong; it may simply be more a reflection on how I use Facebook than others.
It would be a great idea, but… it breaks alot!