Facebook Chat may soon connect to iChat, GTalk, other Jabber clients

Fri, 11/06/2009 - 5:41am — Jonny Evans

Well, with the latest Pew Internet and American Life Project finds (gasp) that people’s use of cellphones and the internet, particularly social networks such as Facebook are actually good for helping them build wider social networks, it’s clear that walled garden approaches to services have no long term future. It’s all about the network.

This is probably why Facebook is preparing a standards-based interface for its Facebook chat system which will potentially make it accessible via GTalk, iChat and other Jabber-based chat services.Facebook is moving to Jabber’s XMPP (extensible messaging and presence protocol ), building a connection interface which should make it possible for users to speak with others currently inside the world’s fastest-growing social networking service without necessarily having to log into their own account (and instantly see time eroded by endless games of Farmville, Mafia Wars and browsing of their mate’s photo galleries).

It doesn’t stop there - moving to XMPP will also let iChat users see when their friends are online on the service, you’ll be able to set your status messages, and maybe take a gander at you’re friend’s profile pics.

Process One reports, “It now seems the launch is close as the XMPP software stack has been deployed on chat.facebook.com, as our bot at IMtrends have found out: chat.facebook.com on IMtrends.”

All told, there’s some proof in this of the Pew Survey findings that, "Our survey results suggest that people's lives are likely to be enhanced by participation with new communication technologies, rather than by fearing that their use of new technology will send them into a spiral of isolation.”

Via Mashable/Next Web

( Filed Under:

Apple Inc News

)

Comments

this has worked in adium for

Fri, 11/06/2009 - 7:20am — hmmmm (not verified)

this has worked in adium for a long time now... way to pick up on this...

First Safari mooches speed

Fri, 11/06/2009 - 8:07am — OS X Copycat (not verified)

First Safari mooches speed dial and gestures from Opera, now they're targeting Adium.

Although Adium's FB chat is still buggy, I think its still mostly Facebook's fault, considering their webchat is even horrendous.

iChat will NEVER have the degree of customization that Adium does. There's an app for that? Theres an Xtra (http://www.adiumxtras.com/) for that.

First Safari mooches speed

Fri, 11/06/2009 - 8:08am — OS X Copycat (not verified)

First Safari mooches speed dial and gestures from Opera, now they're targeting Adium.

Although Adium's FB chat is still buggy, I think its still mostly Facebook's fault, considering their webchat is even horrendous.

iChat will NEVER have the degree of customization that Adium does. There's an app for that? Theres an Xtra (http://www.adiumxtras.com/) for that.

actually...

Sun, 11/08/2009 - 4:53pm — Dave (not verified)

Both pidgin and adium's facebook chat functionality are based off This Project which operates off a technology called JSON. So when you claim the webchat on facebook is horrible (which it is for various reasons, and needs to come out of the context of the browser) .. the very same adium and pidgin plugin pretty much operates based on the limitations of the web chat itself.

Once they support XMPP, accessing facebook chat from ANY client will be much cleaner and work better. If you want a glimpse of the future, use adium to check out your Google Chat contact list. Soon, facebook chat will work like this, and import all your friends on it and let you talk with them like Google Chat has done for years.

lame

Fri, 11/13/2009 - 1:38pm — Jay (not verified)

Why are people clicking thumbs down for these comments? It's true, Adium and Pidgin as well as several applications for Windows have been offering Facebook, Myspace, AIM, Google Talk and lots of other IM services in one application. Why is Apple dragging their feet on this?