Facebook just launched their previously-rumored IM functionality. It offers the opportunity to chat with your facebook friends in real-time over the network in your browser.
The walled garden approach
Kottke mentioned in the past that Facebook is the new AOL. Over the last few years, they've taken increasingly greater steps towards the walled garden approach: sure, interact with our users, but only if you do it via our proprietary methods. AOL neglected HTML in favor of RAINMAN. For Facebook, you have to dive into a world of FBML and FQL. It's a tradeoff between consistency and flexibility, to be sure, but the discussion of the viability of a closed system like Facebook applications on an open system like the internet is rather substantial and best left to a different blog post entirely.
Facebook and AOL diverge
After an interesting few years of back-and-forth battling, AOL eventually ditched their walled-garden approach for their IM protocol and moved towards some openness by publishing guidelines to OSCAR for 3rd party projects like Pidgin or Trillian to use. It could be argued that the growth and ubiquity of the AIM network is sustained through the ability to run AIM over Trillian, Adium, iChat, and others. My entire generation (say, those in college right now) tends to use AIM nearly exclusively, with few of my personal friends using the official AIM client itself.
The thing that's interesting about today's development is that Facebook has diverged from AOL's model, albeit in a backwards way. Facebook Chat uses their existing web interface to deliver their new functionality. Whereas AOL moved from walled garden to tentative openness, Facebook moved from walled garden to, well, walled garden. You can only chat while on facebook.com, you can't use it via their Facebook iPhone/mobile apps, and you can't use a third-party app to interface with the network.
The limitations of a closed IM network
This is a relatively new thing, at least for me. I've dabbled on most major networks: AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber, and Bonjour. The common link between them all is that they're all based on relatively open protocols, at least to the point where you can use them in an Adium or a Trillian. If there was a closed IM network, they at least provided desktop functionality. Facebook doesn't. A straight web-only interface makes it difficult to really be a viable communication medium.
There are a few reasons why I enjoy Adium (though my arguments will likely apply to Pidgin or iChat or whatever your flavor of IM client). For one, I'm a habitual conversation history tracker. I have logs dating back six or seven years. It's helpful to me—I can't tell you how many times someone says something, I close the conversation and immediately forget which time I was supposed to meet them or the line of code I was supposed to check out. Facebook logs your conversations between sessions but not permanently, supposedly (Facebook, as its customary style, is fairly ominously-vague when it comes to your personal information and longevity).
Secondly, you lose out on the natural behavior of your operating system. I actually just received an IM from a friend right now. How did I know? I'm in a different Space in OS X, so my IM windows aren't visible. It's because of OS behaviors that, as a user, you grow accustomed to. Step one: I hear my normal IM ding. Step two: I get my Adium duck flapping its wings on my Dock, with a OS X-standard "1" icon superimposed on the Adium icon, signaling to me that I have one message to check out. Step three: I get a growl notification that tells me the sender and their message, if I want to bother to check that section of my screen before command+tabbing over to Adium to actually read or respond. Beyond that, there's a multitude of OS-specific behaviors you expect: on a Mac, I expect command+W to kill the current conversation tab, shift+command+]/shift+command+[ to tab between conversations, and hey, Adium does a great job with interacting with Address Book to grab user icons and first and last names. You don't get any of this with Facebook Chat.
Even the web interface isn't very standard. For one you have to remain on facebook.com to receive messages, you have to resist a stale session (after 10 minutes or so you're auto-logged out unless you visit another page), and some pages don't even work (try the "People You May Know") link on the main page.
Open and shut case
With these limitations, it might not surprise you to learn that I'm not too enthused about Facebook Chat's prospects. I can't really see it being much more than a "hey, I'm in a cluster on campus and can't get on AIM or MSN... here's the info you wanted". I don't necessarily see it as taking the place of existing networks, particularly because it's so closed. Not only is it web-only—you can't use it with Adium—but it's also Facebook-only—you can only use it with your Facebook friends. That kills prospects of those who want their IM handle public and don't want to have to befriend every user.
Google ran into similar circumstances with GTalk: they gave easy web access to GMail users to talk to existing email contacts, but at the same time pushed open and accessible Jabber standards to allow interoperability. If Facebook wants to really push Facebook Chat (which, since they tossed a floating div on the bottom of every one of their pages, seems to suggest this), they would be smart to take a move out of Google's handbook and add some open operability to their network.
Opening their network is not only smart, but necessary. You know that they will publish IM standards within a few months. Criticizing them for not being open is pointless because it won't be that way for long.
I disagree. For one, they've launched this as web-only. They could have worked and pushed out their own desktop client alongside the launch; they have developed non-web software before. I don't think we can be sure that they're thinking of non-web uses at all.
Along those lines, no, I don't know that they'll be publishing IM standards in a few months, because they haven't announced that. The only real aspects that they have mentioned for future development is pulling other Facebook-related data into the web client (like Newsfeed activity). They simply haven't announced anything, I think there's a real question as to whether they'll ultimately open up.
Google, if I recall correctly, launched their web app and client side software at the same time. Facebook hasn't.
I fully agree with you on this article, Zach. I mean fully. This chat protocol is quite useless to me unless I can use it in Adium. The only window I want to leave open in my browser is my gmail tab with my rememberthemilk task plugin...that's all. Unless they open up the protocol so it can be used by 3rd party programs, I don't see myself using facebook chat.
I think there is an inherent flaw with the AOL issue. I might agree that allowing third-party clients on AIM has kept the network alive and kicking, but as soon as the majority of the users make the switch, AOL loses advertising dollars. It no longer makes sense to sustain the network that isn't bringing in the revenue needed to fund it.
I digress...
I think Facebook has some potential by opening up their chat platform. They can retain privacy controls; have more eyeballs on their web site (for the integrated chat) and potential advertising lines if they were to roll out a desktop client; but still allow users to add a third-party Jabber screen name linked to their profile and have the Facebook chat disabled.
It's not directly competing with AIM. As the walled-in approach that they have built, it will probably just be viewed as added communication channels within facebook.com.
I think it will pull people in regardless, not because of HOW the chat client is built, but with WHOM people can now chat with. I have about 130 people on my AIM list. I use iChat to communicate with these people; however, I don't have any personal friends that use AIM, outside of the good friends I have from my office. So essentially, I use iChat to collaborate to get work done between 9 to 5.
The added convenience of chatting with nearly everyone of my friends from my social life is why I would use facebook's client.
I came here on the back of a Google search, looking for a way to do Facebook chat in Adium. So yes - this is something that people want. It's useless to me if I have to keep Facebook open in a browser window all the time.
Yeah, I'm with Tim here. I was looking for integration with Pidgin. Screw keeping a damn FB tab open just to chat, and going back to it periodically to check on things!