Adium has announced support for Facebook chat in their upcoming release. This is the third instant message application to add support following behind Digsby and Gabtastik. While there is no word on when the upcoming release will officially launch, I would imagine that it will take place in the coming week. Facebook chat is rapidly becoming a ubiquitous platform of communication.

I have been using Facebook chat an increasing amount since I have so many contacts on the site. While Facebook chat doesn’t let you grant selective access to users yet, I’d guess that they will soon add more features. I don’t currently use my Mac as frequently as my PC so I haven’t had the opportunity to check out Gabtastik. It has received positive reviews from a number of people that I’ve spoken to about it.

Adium is one of the most popular chat applications for Mac users and I’d guess that this upcoming release will be extremely popular. Adium already supports 14 other chat platforms including ICQ, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk and a number of others. This will add one more to the lineup. Read more about it over on the Adium blog.

Imagine spending a couple months building a Facebook application only to wake up one day and see it launched as part of Facebook’s core feature set. That’s what happened to Amin Ariana who built the Friendmates application. Amin launched a friend suggestion and soon enough it was launched on Facebook. While I think this service is an obvious feature that would eventually launch, Amin did not sound to happy in his email to News.com.

This wasn’t the only time that Facebook has stepped on developers’ toes. With the upcoming launch of the Facebook chat application, many developers will find it a challenge for their application to succeed. There are currently over 1,200 chat application listed in the Facebook application directory. While most of the chat applications have failed at attracting a sizable user base, a few creative ones have grown significantly.

Babuki Desktop Instant Messenger is one application that has been able to attract a substantial user base within a matter of days. They are avoiding competition with Facebook by launching a desktop chat application that integrates with Facebook. This contrasts with Facebook’s upcoming chat application which resides completely within Facebook.

For now Facebook has avoided angering too many application developers but as time passes and Facebook rolls out new features they are continuously at risk of backlash. Have you seen other applications suffer from new Facebook features?

Mike Arrington has posted about another Facebook IM service that is currently offered for the P.C. I went ahead and installed it and it immediately crashed. The idea of a Facebook IM service is a great one though and it’s nothing new. FriendVox has been offering Facebook IM services for a while now. Both applications have been facing challenges with debugging though.

The second time around the application worked without crashing. There was only one contact on the service though. I tried chatting with Paul Reilly and it appeared to work pretty well. IM alerts pop-up in the corner of your screen everytime you receive a message which is pretty nice. Additionally, it’s pretty nice to have the images automatically loaded directly into your buddy list.

The instant message client is extremely basic. There is a buddy list and IM windows. That’s it. There are also links to your wall posts, friend statuses and more but they are only links and don’t load within the application. It would be nice if you could mouse over a user and view their status. Additionally, I’d like to be able to view appended user profiles within the application. This is a great start as a Facebook instant messenger client. It will be interesting to see how these evolve over the coming months.

One of my biggest Facebook pet peeves is when someone responds to a wall post on their own wall. If you do this, and I know a lot of people do, the person who posted on your wall won’t see your response.

I feel it is my duty to share with you the correct way to respond to a friendly wall post from a friend:

1. Click “Wall-to-Wall” which is found underneith their message.
2. Respond to the wall post and click “post”.

Then they’ll get a notice of your response and you can have a conversation. You can also easily keep track of the messages you have sent back and forth with that friend by clicking wall-to-wall.

So that’s what annoys this gossip blogger.

Oh and stop poking me. I don’t like it!

What’s your Facebook Pet Peeve?

Leora Zellman writes a million blogs and is also a channel editor at b5media

Yesterday, news surfaced that Myspace and Skype are partnering on a voice function for the MySpace IM client. Basing a messaging client on a social network is a powerful concept. Just last week, FriendVox launched a messaging client for Facebook. For me, the real question is when is Facebook going to launch their own IM client as well as upgrade their messaging system?

There are a number of other Facebook IM clients that have launched, a number of which I have previously covered. If Facebook plans on truly becoming a $15 billion company (something that many are highly skeptical of), they are going to need to improve their messaging system. I have spoken with a number of individuals who are having serious problems managing their inbox. This is particularly the case for application developers that have popular applications or those that are social connectors.

The bottom line is that Facebook is going to be forced to release a more effective messaging system soon. The best time for Facebook to release a new messaging client would be prior to the rumored November 5th launch of the Google platform (or at least prior to phase 2 of the Google platform during which Gmail will be integrated). Are you having similar issues with Facebook’s messaging system?

According to blognation, a brand new IM client for Facebook is going to be launching for Facebook in the coming weeks. I covered a chat application back in June which plans on leveraging the Facebook social graph. The application which at the time was called “Airwaves” has changed names to “Fuze.” This new application has been hyped up as though it is the official Facebook chat application that also has an open API.

While it may be the first stand alone chat application to launch, it is not going to be the last, nor does it have a robust set of features. This is an extremely simple chat application but it is definitely a great first attempt. Unfortunately there is no way to test out the application currently so you’ll have to wait until it launches.

Want your profile visitors to be able to instant message you while visiting? Thanks to the new AIM Wimzi widget that was produced by AOL, you can. This application is similar to the Meebo Me widget that was available for users to add to their website. It looks like AIM beat Meebo to the punch but I would be willing to bet that Meebo is furiously developing their Facebook application. Also, it’s interesting to see the growth in AOL’s presence on Facebook. Just yesterday, my friend Frank Gruber created the MyAOL Facebook group. This new application by AIM is extremely useful. Rather then trying to reinvent the wheel by developing a Facebook only chat application, AIM simply brought their product to Facebook. AIM is easily the most popular instant messaging platform within the United States. If you want to let your profile visitors chat with you while they are peeping into your life via your Facebook profile, go grab the AIM WIMZI application.

There are a number of chat applications on Facebook that I have already featured on this blog. One of the chat applications that I have seemed to overlook is SaKi IM. SaKi was the first chat application on Facebook. The application is well designed and works perfectly from within your profile. The downside of the application is that you have to invite all of your friends first. Once you add the application, it tells you which of your friends have already added the application and what their username is. I think it would be highly beneficial to automatically add my friends to be SaKi chat buddies as soon as I sign up. It kind of defeats the purpose if they need to confirm me as a friend twice (once within Facebook and once through SaKi). SaKi has just hit their tipping point and are now experiencing exponential growth on Facebook. While they currently have just over 22,000 users, their user base is growing rapidly. This may end up being one of the more popular chat applications on Facebook. There is definitely some competition among the chat applications including Meebo, Google Talk, and Chizzat. It will be interesting to see which of these apps receives widespread adoption and whether Facebook will launch their own chat application. If you want to try out a new way to chat on Facebook, go grab the SaKi instant message application.

There is a new desktop application in the works that is going to integrate an instant messenger application with the Facebook platform. This is pretty slick. The application will display all of your friends and allow video chat, video messaging, and more. Airwaves is a combination of Adobe’s AIR (previously Apollo) and the Yahoo! Messenger Vista client. While there has been much discussion throughout the blogosphere already, I couldn’t help but comment on it. This is what I always expected of an instant messaging client. I have always theorized about an instant messaging application that gives you access to all of your friend’s profiles, pictures, videos, and friends directly from the application itself. Having access to all of your contacts and their self-expressive media from one simple application would be a revolution in communications. The upcoming Trillian Astra is a perfect example of such an application. It integrates your MySpace (not Facebook …. boo!) IM account, personal profiles, widget plugins, web chat, and more! While the AirWaves applications looks like a far cry from the Trillian Astra (especially since one developer is working on it), it is a step in the right direction. I will be interested to see how this one turns out.

Want to send prank text messages to your friends? If you live in Canada (soon being offered for the U.S.) you can now send funny texts to your friends. The cool part of the application is that your friends can reply to your text without knowing your number. So have fun playing and flirting with your friends or secret crush. Will this be banned? I’m not sure, but if they add the application to the U.S. they are going to start having a massive rush of users. I can see hundreds of millions of text messages as a direct result of this application. If you want to send prank messages to your friends (in Canada for now) then go grab the Wink and Jab application.