David Fredh : Blog and Pictures

With the launch of Chat-functionality in Facebook, the team says that:

“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.”

The biggest question for me is why we need another im-client. The history tell me that we don’t… When everybody switched from ICQ to MSN, it didn’t take long before there were multiple applications like Trillian or Gaim that supported both the networks.

There is already some applications that supports Facebook Chat. For windows, the best alternative is Digsby. It supports all the biggest networks, some mail accounts like Gmail and Hotmail. It also supports Facebook and Twitter. For mac users that loves Adium, you can download a release of Adium that supports facebook here.

So, what about Facebook chat. It’s the simplest on the market (only chat, nothing else)… But it surely has the amount of active users to succeed. Facebook with chat support is a big competitor to MSN. It is already confirmed that facebook chat will support the open jabber protocol. That will make Facebook an even bigger threat because it will work right out of the box with most of the IM messengers like iChat, Trillian, Adium and Gaim.

If the facebook users will stay online and the users are not stuck with the web-client on the site, the success is guaranteed. Maybe we can get rid of this ugly MSN once and for all…