A much-anticipated Facebook chat service has been launched in this week. As most of the social networking platforms have not developed their own set of chatting tool, Faceboook is unveiling its own chat service, which eventually would not let any third-party instant messenger (IM) applications to lure their users into using their apps. From the Facebook’s blog, Josh Wiseman, engineering lead said there are many notable features can be found on this Facebook chat, no installation nor buddy list is required to run this chat service, but if you’re lucky enough, you’ll be one of the first batch of users to experience this. To check whether you’ve been selected as one of them to use this service, simply notice are there any chat icon appeared on the below of your Facebook profile.

Chatting with your Facebook friends is nothing new now. I came across few third-party apps such as FriendVox, social.im, or Babuki that allowed you to do so. All these apps have been successfully integrate to the Facebook platform, and there are not niche apps anymore. When looking at the Babuki’s features, it allowed an user to go beyond the simple instant message, by offering the SMS and mail service that are accessible inside the Facebook profile.

What I was told about this Facebook chat was that it can’t be removed. For users who log-in to their Facebook profiles once, less than 10 mins in a day, when they see the incoming chats, they’re expected to spend more time in chatting with their friends, which in turn help a Facebook user to stay a longer period of time on Facebook. However, an option of “go offline” is provided if she choose not to chat through the Facebook platform.

I heard Facebook chat might also add chat APIs and Jabber support in the future. I’ll go into it in my future post. Stay tuned.

Source: Facebook Watcher