Facebook will announce soon on its developer blog that it’s working on a Jabber/XMPP interface for Facebook Chat. The interface will allow users to talk to their Facebook friends using any Jabber-enabled desktop client.
It will also enable Facebook users with such desktop clients to see which of their friends are online, view friends’ profile pictures, and set their status messages. This will all be possible after users authorize their applications to securely connect and communicate with Facebook Chat.
This is a welcome, albeit not terribly surprising, move on Facebook’s part. The company has recently shown a great willingness to open their data up to other applications and web services. And it’s smart for them to stay ahead of the data portability curve, since they’ll be able to maintain more control over just how data flows in and out of their system (it’s bound to happen anyway).
It’s about time !
Yes, I know. I’m very needy
you can already chat with facebook users using digsby, wonder how they were able to do it without this support?
Isnt there a jabber platform based chat app already? It was recently covered by TC.
I might be hallucinating.
I think they understand that openness is the only way for them to stay ahead. Otherwise the party will just move on to the next cool thing at some point. Although not very spectacular, Integrating into the IM world to allow people to connect with their FB friends makes total sense.
Peter
follow me @ http://twitter.com/peterurban
You said the dirty words Erick! Data portability!!
That’s great news though – glad Facebook is understanding the business opportunity of pioneering in this way.
I meant Mark, sorry mate
@Utkarsh – there was a desktop client we covered that accessed facebook chat but not through an official interface
http://www.tech...-walled-garden/
superb news. Gmail is becoming insanely powerful.
Spooky, i’d just started getting excited about Facebook Chat support in Adium!
http://www.paul...s-facebook-chat
lol!
This is starting to look like quite a big deal – XMPP finally living up to its promise and plan. Assuming they do it vaguely right, it will mean that Facebook chat, Google talk and all the random little Jabber/XMPP servers will be able to talk to each other without the hacks which have been necessary to talk to the proprietary networks. It’s meant to be a ‘white-label’ protocol, so anyone can easily setup their own IM system – but with the big bonus of interoperability with everyone else’s “own IM system”. Something like, oh, the web? Email?
When is the last time anyone went to an AOL keyword? Or sent mail to a Compuserve address? In a few years, might the idea of giving someone your ‘MSN name’ be just as obselete?
@Utkarsh Sinha, maybe they should talk to the guy behind soashable
I wonder if they’ll integrate with Twitter? Twitter uses Jabber/XMPP
DIGSBY FTW
Isn’t there other apps that integrate with FB chat already?
pidgin — it has a plugin for facebook chat (http://code.goo...n-facebookchat/)