I <3 FB Chat… maybe.
I don’t have any idea why this was launched nearly a month ago and I am just finding it, but I think Facebook Chat is a pretty cool idea… and NOT because it’s “CHAT”.
Nevermind that TechCrunch somehow knew about Facebook Chat and I didn’t… must have been that day twitter was down..
First a few screenshots:
The first shows my facebook homepage, with a new “toolbar” along the bottom and a notifications window that pops up:
The second screenshot is a closeup of the status box, showing 9 online friends… 3 active, and 6 idle… and their statuses:
End of the day, I like this tool simply because its providing a drop-dead simple way to:
- Touch in with people simply
- Find out what’s happening in my network
- Communicate with people as-needed in the same place I find them (it is inefficient to use one tool to locate someone and then another tool to communicate with them when you find them!)
I don’t know if FB CHAT has additional features, but I would like it to:
- Integrate with my existing IM client… let me be online via FB chat or another IM tool, and let people find me through their own vector of accessing it.
- Integrate with twitter… or at least FacebookMobile. send me a FB chat and DM it to my twitter client or FB registered cell phone.
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Comments
@karenswim very good point. I hardly RUN an IM client unless I specifically need to. In fact, many online IM conversations begin with a slew of emails or txt messages that sound like:
me: Lets chat via IM
they: OK, which client… skype, gtalk, msn, yahoo, aol…
me: um, gtalk (cause it runs in my browser)
they: OK. catch you in a minute…
Add all that up and you have inefficiency! Kill it!
Robert,exactly! My IM talks start exactly like yours. When we were still living Web 1.0 I truly believed that Web 2.0 would have integrated tools. Yet here we are with fragmented systems that add inefficiency rather than enhance workflow. I would love to see single platforms which could then be customized with tools. Perhaps web 4.0 will finally cater to this need.
@karenswim we’re surely getting there. The API phenomenon is surely helping. For example, I tweeted something relative to the polygamy compound in Texas, and thanks to the twitter facebook app, an old friend from high school responded via facebook.
The conversation was so seamless, at first I had NO IDEA how he knew I was talking about the subject.
THAT was cool!
Robert, thanks for walking us through FB chat. I don’t log on to FB often but when I did this week, I saw the toolbar but did not explore. I of course love Twitter and since I use it the most integration would be nice. I don’t use any of my other IM services unless I need to chat with a client because chatting on Twitter is much easier. Let’s hope additional developments are in the pipeline. In the interim, I like your perspective on how FB chat can be used.