Clearly, the world does not need yet-another IM network… but alas, here’s how to do it:
Facebook may have partnered with AIM to bring chat to your desktop, but if you’re not a fan of the official AIM client, there’s now an easy way to get Facebook Chat in the IM client of your choice.
Over a year ago, Facebook announced that they planned to support Facebook Chat over XMPP/Jabber, the same protocol that Google Talk uses, so people could use Facebook Chat in their favorite IM client—and then it was never mentioned again. Yesterday, though, Facebook announced that in addition to the AIM partnership, the XMPP/Jabber implementation had finally come to fruition.
If you are using a multi-protocol IM client such as Pidign, Adium, or iChat, set-up is really easy—you just add a new Jabber or XMPP account, the username being your [email protected], with your password being the same as your Facebook password. If you still haven’t gotten a Facebook username (the tag that appears after www.facebook.com/ for your profile page) you’ll need to go to your Settings page to enable it.
