Users of Facebook will start seeing the site's new chat feature showing up in their browsers starting today, the company has announced.
According to a blog post by Facebook's Josh Wiseman, users won't have to install anything or set up a buddy list. Once chat is turned on for your account (Facebook is rolling it out over the next day or two), all of your Facebook contacts will be accessible via the tiny app. Also, news from your Mini-Feed and notifications from your installed apps will show up interspersed with your chat conversations in real time.
We first reported on chat when Facebook previewed it last month. Sister site Portfolio also covered the preview.
Like the rest of Facebook's features, chat will launch without you having to sign up for it, and the Mini-Feed headlines will be incorporated by default. According to Wiseman, you can turn off the option to see your Mini-Feed within chat in the privacy settings. You can also collapse chat windows and temporarily disable chats by changing your chat status to "offline."
As far as I can tell after searching the site and digging through all of my settings, the chat feature can't be removed – it's just part of the Facebook experience now. Along with pokes, status updates and the rest of the "who's doing what" noise. And of course, as soon as you log in to the site, your friends will see you pop up in their chat contacts list so they can immediately start asking you questions about Lost or basketball or what you ate for lunch.
Here's a suggestion: open, standard-based access to my Facebook contacts through the client of my choosing – like Google Talk, which took Google's Chat application out of the browser. I like the idea of having instant, real time access to my Facebook friends, but I don't want to spend a lot of time on Facebook. Also, I may want to log into Facebook without having to deal with incoming chats – or the threat of them – at all. But it's not likely, since Facebook has been rather open about its intention to make the site the hub of our online social lives. The reason they launched chat is to keep people using Facebook for longer periods of time. Why off-load one of the stickiest features yet?
There's social.im, which offers access to Facebook contacts within iChat and Adium via plug-in components, but leaves access to Facebook's notification features behind. Social.im's stand-alone Windows client adds some of them back in (Wired.com is a primarily Mac-based shop). It's a nice alternative if you can live with a few shortcomings.
Let us know your impressions and experiences with Facebook chat in the comments. Also, if you have any additional advice for quieting Facebook's growing blizzard of information, leave them here.
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