Facebook Chat Launches for All
Yesterday morning I said that Facebook chat would be open for all within a matter of weeks. It appears as though it happened within hours of my post as it now appears that everyone has access to chat. I have received 20 IMs in the past hour. Considering that I had only received a few IMs previously, it definitely appears that the chat is live for all.
The full launch of chat appears to have coincided with the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco which kicked off this morning. Chat will surely keep a lot more users engaged on the site and will most likely contribute to continued growth in the Facebook user base. Currently, MySpace is the only other competitor to have an instant messaging client, but MySpace has been known to have plenty of issues with chat server downtime and a less useful interface.
So far I have found the Facebook chat application to be useful and easy to interact with. Considering that I typically have over 100 friends online at any given moment, there is always someone to talk with. If you are my friend on Facebook definitely feel free to IM me, just don’t use it as a way to pitch me on stories. I now have about 10 different ways that people can contact me and the only way to send pitches should be via email.
Anyways, feel free to post your feedback about the Facebook chat application in the comments. We are interested to hear what users think about it.
