Yesterday morning I said that Facebook chat would be open for all within a matter of weeks. It appears as though it happened within hours of my post as it now appears that everyone has access to chat. I have received 20 IMs in the past hour. Considering that I had only received a few IMs previously, it definitely appears that the chat is live for all.
The full launch of chat appears to have coincided with the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco which kicked off this morning. Chat will surely keep a lot more users engaged on the site and will most likely contribute to continued growth in the Facebook user base. Currently, MySpace is the only other competitor to have an instant messaging client, but MySpace has been known to have plenty of issues with chat server downtime and a less useful interface.
So far I have found the Facebook chat application to be useful and easy to interact with. Considering that I typically have over 100 friends online at any given moment, there is always someone to talk with. If you are my friend on Facebook definitely feel free to IM me, just don’t use it as a way to pitch me on stories. I now have about 10 different ways that people can contact me and the only way to send pitches should be via email.
Anyways, feel free to post your feedback about the Facebook chat application in the comments. We are interested to hear what users think about it.
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I'm going to have to contradict that. I'm on the Denver, CO network, and facebook chat is not turned on as of now.
Comment by Charlie — April 23, 2008 @ 6:40 am
Nevermind, strike that. It just turned on for me in the last three minutes.
Comment by Charlie — April 23, 2008 @ 6:43 am
It's great, no distractions of poking, buzzing or silly custom emotions. I would like there to be sound notifications though.
Comment by Andrew — April 23, 2008 @ 7:04 am
I like it, but with one complaint. Once the "Online Friends" list gets too big for the window, it becomes annoying to have to scroll through the list. Perhaps Facebook could use the "Friends Lists" and group people into collapsible lists.
Comment by Dan Jones — April 23, 2008 @ 7:22 am
What about this Facebook Lexicon?
Comment by Anon — April 23, 2008 @ 7:22 am
I hope they add support to the API. It would be very powerful to allow users within an application to chat together!
Comment by Greg Tracy — April 23, 2008 @ 7:30 am
Actually there's one other problem I have with it. I use the site-specific browser Prism by Mozilla Labs. It uses the most recent Gecko rendering engine, so it can do everything Firefox does.However, when I logged into Facebook this morning, there was a message on my main page saying that the new Chat feature didn't work on my browser, and I would have to use Firefox or Flock. I had to go into Prism's config to change the user-agent so that it looked like I was using Firefox. Once I did that, it worked perfectly, which just shows that Facebook didn't know what they were talking about.I sent them a complaint about it already.
Comment by Dan Jones — April 23, 2008 @ 7:30 am
So where are the Gresemonkey hacks and stand alones?
Comment by MikeonTv — April 23, 2008 @ 8:09 am
Actually there's one other problem I have with it. I use the site-specific browser Prism by Mozilla Labs. It uses the most recent Gecko rendering engine, so it can do everything Firefox does.
However, when I logged into Facebook this morning, there was a message on my main page saying that the new Chat feature didn't work on my browser, and I would have to use Firefox or Flock. I had to go into Prism's config to change the user-agent so that it looked like I was using Firefox. Once I did that, it worked perfectly, which just shows that Facebook didn't know what they were talking about.
I sent them a complaint about it already.
Comment by Dan Jones — April 23, 2008 @ 8:30 am
I'm also getting the "You are using a browser we don't currently support" message. I'm using Opera 9.
Comment by MD — April 23, 2008 @ 8:33 am
A strange problem…i use IE 7 with Windows Vista and it says that I am using IE6 :-O and I can’t use it properly… Firefox is ok… anyone knows something about that>?
Comment by Manos — April 23, 2008 @ 9:58 am
I’m going to have to contradict that. I’m on the Denver, CO network, and facebook chat is not turned on as of now.
Comment by Charlie — April 23, 2008 @ 10:40 am
Nevermind, strike that. It just turned on for me in the last three minutes.
Comment by Charlie — April 23, 2008 @ 10:43 am
It’s great, no distractions of poking, buzzing or silly custom emotions. I would like there to be sound notifications though.
Comment by Andrew — April 23, 2008 @ 11:04 am
I like it, but with one complaint. Once the “Online Friends” list gets too big for the window, it becomes annoying to have to scroll through the list. Perhaps Facebook could use the “Friends Lists” and group people into collapsible lists.
Comment by Dan Jones — April 23, 2008 @ 11:22 am
What about this Facebook Lexicon?
Comment by Anon — April 23, 2008 @ 11:22 am
I hope they add support to the API. It would be very powerful to allow users within an application to chat together!
Comment by Greg Tracy — April 23, 2008 @ 11:30 am
So where are the Gresemonkey hacks and stand alones?
Comment by MikeonTv — April 23, 2008 @ 12:09 pm
I’m also getting the “You are using a browser we don’t currently support” message. I’m using Opera 9.
Comment by MD — April 23, 2008 @ 12:33 pm
A strange problem…i use IE 7 with Windows Vista and it says that I am using IE6 :-O and I can’t use it properly… Firefox is ok… anyone knows something about that>?
Comment by Manos — April 23, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
FB chat has a message archive – but of course there's no notification, so i only saw the message when i opened up a chat window with that friend to ask WTF didn't he send me a message! Miscommunications galore!
Comment by Idoru — April 24, 2008 @ 6:07 am
FB chat has a message archive – but of course there’s no notification, so i only saw the message when i opened up a chat window with that friend to ask WTF didn’t he send me a message! Miscommunications galore!
Comment by Idoru — April 24, 2008 @ 10:07 am
Facebook thinks I'm using IE6 as well when I am also using IE7 with Windows vista, a bit annoying as I prefer it to firefox
Comment by EC — May 1, 2008 @ 11:18 am
To Dan Jones: and how did u do that with the Prism’s config?
Comment by mat — July 31, 2008 @ 4:33 am
To Dan Jones:
and how did u do that with the Prism’s config?
Comment by mat — July 31, 2008 @ 5:33 am
Is there a way NOT to be SEEN as ONLINE when you log in to facebook? I am a member of other online groups that you can adjust your setting not to show you have logged in.
Someone mentioned wanting sound to this new feature– it does have sound for me. Not sure if that was just added but I used it last night and it had sound as the person I chatted w/ responded.
Comment by debra — May 4, 2009 @ 10:52 am