Facebook Chat Now Available In An IM Client Near You

Are you the type of person who has a large number of friends on Facebook that you chat with regularly, but do not want to keep the site open within your browser constantly? Well, Facebook recently made an upgrade to their chat system to allow the integration of Facebook Chat into all instant messaging clients that support the open messaging protocol Jabber (XMPP). All that is required to begin use of Facebook Chat outside of the site itself is an instant messaging client such as Pidgin on Windows and Linux, or iChat on Mac OS X.

Facebook not only made this move for the average user, but they also have made Facebook Chat part of the Facebook Connect API. This provides developers the ability to create chat experiences within their own websites and applications.

The following connection information can be used to begin use of Facebook Chat within your own instant messaging client:

Protocol: Jabber/XMPP

Server: chat.facebook.com (SSL Off)

Port: 5222

Username: facebook_username@chat.facebook.com

Password: Your Facebook Password

This move by Facebook to allow the use of Facebook Chat outside of the website itself is a very smart move. Facebook contains many people who have a large number of friends, and by providing access to those friends outside of the website, conversations can be created without a worry about what instant messaging client is being used by the friends. Such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, etc. It is all centralized.

For more information or a more detailed description of how to use Facebook Chat outside of the website, please take a look at the official announcement.