“Facebook’s 67 million users’ world wide can now chat with each other. The new functionality is being integrated gradually.”
As promised, Facebook has opened up its much awaited chat and instant-messaging application this week. Although the opening is limited at this time, Inside Facebook was lucky enough to take a peek.
It seems that the rollout is on a per-network basis, with information arriving in that many of the Ivy League schools and Stanford are among the first to have access.
Facebook Chat is a three pronged contact on Facebook, adding together to the already accessible Wall and Message features.
The chat features were announced through a blog post on The Facebook Blog, states that the rollout will be slow, but, unlike MySpaceIM and most other IM clients, Facebook’s IM application directly appears as a “Chat Bar” at the bottom of your browser so there is no need to install the program.
“The Chat bar gives you access to your current chat windows, online friends list, notifications, Chat settings, and your online status.”
Facebook IM is in fact comparable to the chat features of Gmail’s GTalk has had for awhile, imitating the way that browser-based IM functions, except it is exclusive to Facebook and does not integrate with third party instant messaging services. It offers an option to pop-out your chat window, so you can carry on browsing Facebook without missing the path of your chat session.
Apart from the pop-out aspect, Facebook chat, like many other IM program, allows you to appear “offline” if you do not wish to chat. The chats are private and the conversation history is saved from page to page and between login sessions, but only temporarily. Users can easily clear the chat history any time using a provided link in the conversation window to do so.
Josh Wiseman, a Facebook engineering lead said: “We are working on pulling other features of the site into the real-time Chat world. Your notifications will now arrive in the Chat bar, and while making conversation you will see your friend’s Mini-Feed activity thrown into the conversation, as it occurs.”
Facebook Chat overall offers one unique feature — it embeds your Mini-Feed activity into the chat sessions, in real-time, as it occurs. This feature is to catch your inattention in to the conversation at hand? This setting is on by default, so multi-taskers beware.
“Also in future, Facebook Chat might also add Chat APIs and Jabber support, at least according to Facebook’s Matt Cohler, but today’s Facebook blog post made no mention of that.”
While it is unusual that Facebook Chat does not integrate with other IM services, it is a smart move for Facebook. This will draw on Facebook’s large user base and get a lot more people on their chat service.
It would not come as a surprise to see if people tend to spend more time on Facebook as a result of the introduction of this new feature. Users usually tend to keep a Facebook window open just for sending and receiving instant messages.