Facebook Launches Chat
As expected, Facebook announced that they will be launching Facebook Chat this week. The announcement, made via a post on The Facebook Blog, says that the rollout will be slow, but, unlike MySpaceIM, there won't be anything for you to install when it arrives in your profile - you'll just have a new "Chat Bar" at the bottom of your browser. On the one hand, Facebook needed to launch chat in order to compete with the News Corp giant, but on the other, we have to wonder, do we need another IM?
Facebook IM takes a page out of Gmail's GTalk, mimicking the way that browser-based IM functions - it even offers a way to pop-out your conversation window, so you can continue browsing Facebook without losing track of your chat session.
In addition to the pop-out feature, Facebook chat, like any IM program, lets you appear "offline" if you don't want to chat. The conversations are private, and the chat sessions history is saved from page to page and between login sessions, but not permanently. You can also clear the chat history at any time using a provided link in the conversation window to do so.
Facebook Chat - Image from Inisde Facbook
Facebook Chat does offer one unique feature - it embeds your Mini-Feed activity into the conversation, in real-time, as it occurs. This is interesting, but why is this useful? So your chat can be interrupted with your score from that trivia game you were playing, revealing your inattention to the conversation at hand? This setting is on by default, so multi-taskers beware.
Now that we have Facebook Chat, where does this leave the other services whose existence practically depended on Facebook's lack of IM capabilities? One such application that comes to mind is Social.IM, whose claim to fame is that their use of Facebook's API lets you chat with your Facebook friends. Will they now try to compete with the integrated chat on a feature-by-feature basis or possibly revamp themselves as a universal IM program, a la Trillian?
Friendvox seems doomed too for the same reasons, but newly launched Babuki at least had the foresight to launch as a universal IM and social network client, letting you chat on the traditional IM networks as well as with your LiveJournal and MySpace friends.
Also on deathwatch are the two pages of instant messaging applications on Facebook itself, who will soon find themselves without any users, thanks to Facebook chat.
In the future, Facebook Chat may 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.
Finally, with today's conversations happening more often on networks like Twitter, we wonder if we really need another IM. Will the addition of chat make you log into Facebook more than before? Probably not. If anything, it's just one more attempt to get us to play inside Facebook's walled garden - a place that is rapidly losing its appeal for many.
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If Facebook allows users to IM from outside of facebook...YM and MSN M are going to have a hard time..battle is about to heat up...cant wait to see the outcome!
Well said Dhingana. I am sure sometime they are going to allow chat outside facebook network
I think that a problem arises when there are too many options. I know people think the more options the better but I see IM being watered down to the point where it just about become irrelevant.
Also Facebook and MySpace, though all the rage right now, will have more competition then a football player on a Sunday afternoon. They also are at risk at becoming diluted. The next new thing...and there is always a new thing around the corner will knock Facebook and MySpace off of the radar. I know many people disagree...but I believe it will happen.
It's great to have chat in Facebook, but good lord they couldn't have found a more annoying way to "integrate" it. A bar that fills your browser window at the bottom? And, just for fun, it also overlays anything below it? It's like every bad frame-based design from the late-90s come back to haunt us.
I had to start a group to let them know:
Dear Facebook, the new chat bar is clunky UI and annoying as well
Hopefully facebook chat will work better than myspace chat does. I have installed myspace chat on several computers and it has slowed down each of those computers significantly. On a side note, facebook needs to cut down on their applications. no one cares about werewolves fighting vampires, etc.
Chat is by no means a new concept, as instant messaging systems have been around for over a decade. But just as other features on Facebook have allowed friends to communicate more efficiently than before, we hope Facebook Chat will make it easier to connect instantly.
This is a very intersting blog post.
"a place that is rapidly losing its appeal for many."
Come on, this is bullshit. It might have lost its appeal for the small crowd that fell for FriendFeed but this is not what I would call "many". Most people have no problem being "locked in the walled garden". Personally, me neither. Facebook is for me what FriendFeed would like to be, a central place for me and my friends (even the none-geeks), with the difference that I don't need to spend hours there to get a good overview about what my buddies are up to.
Its almost scary if you compare this article which deals with a very nice and for mainstream users certainly attractive feature and still has a negative tenor to how the RWW Facebook posts looked like nine month ago.
This is especially strange since you usually post about "game changers" all day. It seems to me like you lost all objectiveness which is a pitty.
Cool news... but I really don't find myself using it a whole lot.
Not a game changer for me.
I love the fact that they're finally getting into the real-time interaction game... but was expecting something somewhat "Twitterish" that would enable 1 to many chat.
To me... the FB chat is just another chat client I need to keep track of... but one benefit is that it may give me the opportunity to consolidate my friends/colleagues onto one chat client instead of across several of them (Gtalk, MSN, AIM, etc.).
Great that they're moving forward... but they could have made it a bit more leading edge.
As a Facebook application developer I'll be interested to see how this intergrates with applications.
We have a game in production at the moment where we were going to include our own chat system much like the one in Scrabulous.
Now there is no point as Facebook Chat will be the desired method of communication for users. This provides us with the huge benefit of reduced development and maintenance time for the application. Omitting our own chat system also gives us a lot more screen space for the application interface.
My only concern is how effective Chat will actually be when used in conjunction with an application. I guess we'll just have to wait for the roll-out and see how it works before continuing with development.
Chat is by no means a new concept, as instant messaging systems have been around for over a decade. But just as other features on Facebook have allowed friends to communicate more efficiently than before, we hope Facebook Chat will make it easier to connect instantly.
No, we don't need another IM program. But we DID need IM within social networking. It was only natural that social networking reintegrate its ancestor into mainstream offerings. With Twitter and IM and FriendFeed and Facebook, everything is too spread out and disconnected. It's only natural that Facebook attempt to suck it all in, centralize it, and weave a tighter social graph within its walled garden.
Check out my expanded thoughts here: http://tropophilia.com/2008/04/15/facebook-chat-social-networking-comes-home/.
Best,
Jarred
http://tropophilia.com
its very nice
I really want an API for this. Really badly. The biggest problem is lack of notification if the FB window is obscured. The flashing title works for windows, but not mac. I did make a quick widget out of the pop-out window, but it's too big. Also, No sound notification. An API would fix this fast. But the concept overall is something i've been hoping for. The biggest problem with IM was maintaining a buddylist and having to install a client. FB solves this. The implementation is quite slick, especially for version 1.
I wanted to see if anyone knew what ports Facebook IM uses so I can open them up on the firewall?
Thanks,
Ben