Facebook fans are getting a new toy this week. With the launch of Facebook Chat, users will be able to communicate in real time with friends on the site.
The social networking giant, which boasts more than 69 million active users, has always had a built-in message system that resembles e-mail.
But for the first time, the site will release a chat system so friends can type back and forth instantly. Because Facebook users already have lists of friends, they won't need to build buddy lists. At the bottom right of any Facebook page, users can click an "Online Friends" button that will indicate which friends are available to chat.
Facebook Chat only allows for one-to-one conversations. Users will be able to view recent conversations, but the chats won't be logged permanently, and users will be able to clear that chat history any time.
Facebook users will also have the option of keeping the conversation on the bottom of the screen or creating a pop-up window they can move. A chat window will also display Mini-Feed stories, which are notices concerning other friends' Facebook activities.
Facebook Chat could mean big competition for America Online's instant message client AIM, which is the No. 1 instant message service in the United States. (Time Warner is the parent company of AOL and CNN.)
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"[Facebook Chat] looks like it's going to be an interesting and useful feature," said Josh Pasek, a graduate student in political communication at Stanford University. "My bet is that this will surpass [Google's] GChat as No. 2 behind AIM, because it's so universally used and logged into."
Patrick Thornton, who runs the blog "The Journalism Iconoclast," said since he can chat with his Gmail contacts in Gmail and Facebook friends on Facebook, he will have little need for AIM.
"Facebook is a platform that allows people to connect in much deeper and more visceral ways than a standalone IM client ever could," he said. "Why just talk to someone when you can experience them? That's what Facebook allows people to do."
2 comments:
I will definitely use this more than AIM but probably not as much as Google chat. I hope they allow chat with more than one person at a time soon because that would be helpful when making plans!
Facebook chat is a great program, now i can chat with people in my homepage!
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