Facebook IM Client Social.im Now Available For Mac

yeah only if all of those friends have this software too. Yawn…..

it could be acquired by facebook soon, let’s see.

max 20 friend limit. not really worth the hassle is it, especially when you’ve got 400+ friends like most people do on FB.

Been asked not to write about this, but there’s been a confidential private beta version of a browser based facebook IM (called Friendvox) out for about a month, by the guys who did the Bob Dylan app.

http://www.friendvox.com/friendvox/

You can already read about FriendVox on TechCrunch UK:
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2007/.....-facebook/

wtf?! they already have this, it’s called instant messaging. and as is usually the case, this reinvented wheel is quite lumpy.

my god - someone drive a truck into facebook’s datacenter already before we get a facebook version of everything.

next week - an email client to email with your facebook friends! woohoo!! (mac version coming soon)

New version of FriendVox out very soon,browser based extravaganza - watch this space and TechCrunch UK.

Techlightenment

Hi Michael & commenters,

First off, thank you Michael for covering our Mac v1 launch! Some answers to your comments:

[Michael] re iChat: it turns out iChat has trouble with rosters as large as yours. It’s an iChat problem not a Social.IM problem though we are checking to see if there’s something we can do about it (ie. give you your top 1000 out of 3000 friends…). Everything should work well on Adium

[Michael] re missing functionality vs. Windows version: You’re right. We will be adding all that stuff very shortly but wanted to get something working for Mac and Linux users quickly so that they could at least chat with their friends. The notifications, etc… will be there very soon, and we’ll of course keep you posted!

[#1 Techmine] Or they could connect via any XMPP/Jabber-compliant chat client they already have installed. That’s the nice side-effect behind this release.

[#2 Isaac] Do you know something we don’t? For how much?

[#3 Pramesh] That limit is the number of friends you can invite to Social.IM per-day, and that’s a Facebook limit not a Social.IM limit. You can have as many friends as you want on Social.IM: Michael has his entire 3000+ in his roster!

[#4-5, 7] Looking forward to seeing what FriendVox is up to.

Best regards,
-Yanda-

Chat with me on Social.IM: the Instant Messenger client for Facebook! (http://social.im)

Mike- Don’t you think Meebo will be able to build something like this fairly easy? And then you won’t have to download any software and be able to chat over all of the messaging platforms?

The real news is its now available for Linux, not Mac.

and.. what is this… ‘MAC’ you speak of?

0_o

some kind of… computer or something?

*sniff*

@gilltots, agreed. Wasn’t the whole point of this facebook, proprietary IM ysytem to get people to stay on facebook?

Otherwise why not just use the jabber IM protocol,aka IETF’s XMPP?

I can’t wait for facebook chatrooms. Let the ads role on this new wheel.

I don’t know if I really need another messenger, but at least it’s built on the XMPP protocol so you aren’t *required* to download the software if you’re already using a decent multi-protocol IM client.

So, I should have read previous comments, but the details here are still fuzzy (for me anyway).

Social.im takes facebook im >> XMPP >> any XMPP client?

How much code was taken from pidgin, miranda and adium for this ’special’ client?

Hi Calamity Jane,

None.

We have our own client on Windows which has some additional features (as Michael describes above) which we will soon have on Mac as well. On top, we provide an XMPP/Jabber gateway to our service so that you can use your client of choice if you don’t want to or can’t use our client (as on Mac, Linux and other Windows clients).

The codebase was developed in-house by my partner Lucas and myself.

Best,
-Yanda-

To all the naysayers. Let the users decide.
Congratulations to the innovative social.im team!

Keep it up, guys. Really great to see the quick refinement and expansion of the product based on feedback.

Let me ask you something - if I log in and none of my friends are online because none of them have even heard of this, why should I log in ever again when all my friends are already using AIM?

This is no different than starting any other proprietary IM network - either everyone joins all at once or no one will join. There is a network effect which prevents others from entering the IM market and that is your biggest obstacle.

I really can’t understnd why anyone will choose to use it over 8hands-
why settle for Facebook IM when you can IM with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Flickr all in the same UI?