Facebook Chat supports Jabber now

iChat: Add new account in Preferences, select type Jabber, enter username "<username>@chat.facebook.com" (where username is selected in Facebook settings, and you need to logout from Facebook after that change). For password use Facebook password.

So, from what I understand, this is a way for clients like Adium to connect to Facebook chat, but it isn't a way for things like Google Talk to interact with Facebook Chat. That's disappointing. It would have been nice if they announced that they're trying to get interoperability with other networks going.

Jabber support for FB Chat is nice, but failing to support SSL/TLS is not really acceptable...

I thought it would be a more obvious question, but how do you think this will affect the other big messenger clients/protocols? MSN/YIM/AIM/GTalk ?<p>I already noticed a trend in which a large portion of my friends will use facebook chat now and not even bother to login to MSN Messenger (which is the most popular client in my geographical area).

Kudos. Now will they follow through?<p>I'll be impressed if they indicate they're working towards full server-to-server as Google has done with their XMPP implementation.

It's annoying that once software products become extremely popular, the developers/companies often start adding features in an attempt to be everything for everyone. This in turn makes the software unusable, because the developers are too overloaded to properly maintain their once core business. Eventually it gets replaced by a new product, and the cycle repeats itself.

The Pidgin instructions are incorrect. The "Local Alias" field should be set to your name, not "Facebook Chat", as this field controls what name is printed next to your messages in your local chat window.<p>Unless your name is actually "Facebook Chat", of course.

My friend lists correspond to privacy settings, not human-friendly groups (just photos, nothing, professional contacts). They should divorce friend lists from chat groups.

wow. Facebook will now know when, where and how long you are online.

Using it seems to force the on-site chat to be enabled.