FaceBook IM On The Horizon

13 Comments

by  

Leslie Poston,

on March 16, 2008,


facebook logoIt seems to be FaceBook's plan to continue expanding as the primary destination for social networking needs. That being the case, they've been missing a few key components that their competitors, like MySpace, already offer. One of these has been a viable instant messaging service.

Recent rumors have surfaced that FaceBook has been working on an instant message solution using the Jabber platform. Not only that, it seems we may see the results of this backstage work as early as next week. The decision to work with Jabber is key, as it will allow those of us who use a service like Adium or Trillian to see our instant messages from FaceBook friends without having to be logged in to FaceBook.

The instant message service will operate on the FaceBook site. It is reported to allow users to talk to other people already in their profile who have the service activated. If it were limited to the FaceBook site and did not have Jabber as its backbone, i might not use it - I don't have that kind of time to spend on one site alone. However, with the portability of Jabber, I may find myself installing yet another instant message service, adding to the long list of those I already use.

There are already plenty of third party applications on FaceBook supplying various degrees of instant message assistance. I think that having one source for instant messaging on FaceBook is a better solution. I haven't signed up with any of the current slate of third party applications because none of my friends use the same one, and that would require installing too many. The fact that FaceBook implementing its own solution would kill off these third party applications seemed to bother others in the tech world, but I think it's a good thing from the user's point of view. The only question now is what took FaceBook so long to create its own solution?


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  • No GravatarSpike - March 16, 2008 at 09:47 am PDT

    Adium or Trillian are NOT services - they are IM CLIENTS. Jabber.org or Jabbim.com or Google (http://talk.google.com/) provide Jabber/XMPP-based IM SERVICES.

  • No GravatarSvetlana Gladkova - March 17, 2008 at 12:27 am PDT

    What I do not understand (and hopefully Spike as an expert can explain) is if I already use Jabber protocol in my IM client (Miranda in my case) for Gtalk, will I be able to add the Facebook IM service. I would definitely add it as soon as the service is released if I figured out how to do this.

  • No GravatarGrendel - March 17, 2008 at 04:55 am PDT

    Jabber is just a protocol. You have to marry it with a service (the people running the Jabber servers)… I haven’t used Miranda, but if it has Jabber support, it should allow you to add more Jabber account profiles for different services.

  • No GravatarSvetlana Gladkova - March 17, 2008 at 05:09 am PDT

    Thank you Grendel. But the problem is that I have Jabber protocol set to work with Gtalk in Miranda and it seems I can not add another Jabber protocol for another IM service :( I have 5 protocols configured in Miranda and every protocol requires a user name and login for the service it uses and the port it should connect to. Anyway since Miranda community is pretty big and develops add-ons fast, they will be able to offer some solution specifically for Facebook.

  • No GravatarCyndy Aleo-Carreira - March 17, 2008 at 07:26 am PDT

    Svetlana, then switch to Trillian. I know that they allow more than one Jabber-based account. Adium does as well, and I’m surprised that Miranda is that far behind. There are other Open Source or free multi-protocol clients; Meebo allows more than one as well.

  • No GravatarSvetlana Gladkova - March 17, 2008 at 09:24 am PDT

    Cyndy, the thing is that I can not be sure that Miranda does not permit it. Chances are I just don’t know how to configure it for this - Miranda is too extensive with all the add-ons. And I think I am a bit addicted to it - I have actually tried to switch to some other IM clients (but did not try Trillian) but could not live without Miranda :) Still I’m sure that Miranda community will be able to suggest a walk around this when Facebook IM is released.

  • No GravatarPretty Cathy - March 26, 2008 at 11:58 pm PDT

    We have launched an IM for Facebook ( VisualSage). The coolest software I think. With this software users can chat, manage, play with all friends on Facebook. Hope you can enjoy it or give us some suggestion.

    Cordially, Cathy

    App address: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=9382373185
    website: http://visual-sage.com/

  • No GravatarAS - May 04, 2008 at 10:07 am PDT

    Кстати говоря, а вот как его подключить к миранде?

  • No GravatarSvetlana Gladkova - May 04, 2008 at 09:46 pm PDT

    @AS: I have not tried to add Facebook IM to Miranda (though I’m a very heavy Miranda user). But if you want to get more replies here (and some tips from those that have actually tried to do this), I’d recommend you to post this comment in English :)

  • No GravatarAs - May 04, 2008 at 10:38 pm PDT

    Sorry, I have decided that you are Russian, on this issue and asked for Russian:)
    —
    translate google translate))

  • No GravatarSvetlana Gladkova - May 04, 2008 at 10:45 pm PDT

    @AS: You are absolutely right, I am Russian myself but the author of the post definitely is not same as 98% of Profy readers - so you’d be able to easier get the answer to the question you are interested in :)

  • No GravatarVlatko - May 06, 2008 at 03:58 am PDT

    Miranda support multiple Jabber accounts. Just make a copy of jabber.dll to anotherjabber.dll and viola!

  • No GravatarSvetlana Gladkova - May 06, 2008 at 04:08 am PDT

    Thanks a lot! I’ll definitely try this out today, this info is very much appreciated!

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