

Facebook Chat supports Jabber now - ashu
http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=361

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presto10
iChat: Add new account in Preferences, select type Jabber, enter username
"<username>@chat.facebook.com" (where username is selected in Facebook
settings, and you need to logout from Facebook after that change). For
password use Facebook password.

~~~
hachiya
BitlBee:

    
    
      account add jabber FACEBOOK_USERNAME@chat.facebook.com FACEBOOK_PASS
      account list
      account add 2 (or whatever number the above list shows is Facebook)
      # you'll need to do a /whois on your friends and rename them: 
      rename u393222111 John
      rename u134322433 Bob

~~~
yurifury
Thank you very much.

The renaming is fairly annoying, can anyone think of a way to auto-name users?

~~~
hachiya
A script to do /whois the first time, and rename the nick to the shown
username would work.

Here's one: <http://a.ngus.net/bitlbee_rename.pl>

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mdasen
So, from what I understand, this is a way for clients like Adium to connect to
Facebook chat, but it isn't a way for things like Google Talk to interact with
Facebook Chat. That's disappointing. It would have been nice if they announced
that they're trying to get interoperability with other networks going.

~~~
rmaccloy
Most people who use FB chat are probably going through the FB site. Dealing
with authorization/privacy/spam/abuse for federated users would be a pretty
difficult UI/support challenge since it's not integrated with FB's existing
friend/profile privacy concepts.

~~~
mdasen
It's not that difficult. GMail does it. So, xyz@gmail.com requests to add
abc@chat.facebook.com to its contact list. In the Facebook web interface, it
comes up in the list of groups that you are requested to join, friends to
confirm, etc. Privacy settings for vCard stuff (like image) can be the same as
they are for Facebook - and Facbeook can use the Jabber ID of the other party
(xyz@gmail.com) to see what their Facbeook account is for that or just give
the public information (most people have a public profile picture).

SPAM and abuse isn't that hard. Remove the person from your contacts. Done.
They can't contact you any more. Really, it's the same as if one of your
Facbeook friends was creating SPAM or abuse.

Basically, it's just "friending" people by Jabber ID rather than by Facebook
user id in a "chat contact" status.

There are technical challenges to federation and it _did_ take Google a while
to implement it. However, the UI, SPAM, and authorization parts don't seem
that challenging. And it would be nice if Facebook opened up a bit. And
Facebook might be working on this, but I don't think it's a UI issue. In the
long run, it will come down to whether Facebook wants to be closed or open and
that's a policy decision.

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evgen
Jabber support for FB Chat is nice, but failing to support SSL/TLS is not
really acceptable...

~~~
aaronblohowiak
When would you use FB chat and care about the privacy of the communication?

~~~
aw3c2
This includes the login I guess...

~~~
philfreo
can someone confirm that login info is sent in the clear? that's pretty
terrible.

~~~
kam
They claim they're using DIGEST-MD5, so not quite plaintext, but a broken hash
algorithm

<http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=16742>

<http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=16741>

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mattwdelong
I thought it would be a more obvious question, but how do you think this will
affect the other big messenger clients/protocols? MSN/YIM/AIM/GTalk ?

I already noticed a trend in which a large portion of my friends will use
facebook chat now and not even bother to login to MSN Messenger (which is the
most popular client in my geographical area).

~~~
rlpb
The massive benefit for me is that all my friends are already on Facebook.
It's effectively got automatic roster management, which is a killer feature
since I don't normally get round to adding people to MSN (which is also the
most popular client in my geographical area).

I reckon that because Facebook has such a large number of users already, this
has the potential to kill the other IM networks. Maybe it's not so good for
properly federated XMPP, though, since this also presumably means that
Facebook have no real incentive to implement it.

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ryandvm
Kudos. Now will they follow through?

I'll be impressed if they indicate they're working towards full server-to-
server as Google has done with their XMPP implementation.

~~~
pyre
see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1115963>

------
rmorrison
It's annoying that once software products become extremely popular, the
developers/companies often start adding features in an attempt to be
everything for everyone. This in turn makes the software unusable, because the
developers are too overloaded to properly maintain their once core business.
Eventually it gets replaced by a new product, and the cycle repeats itself.

~~~
thwarted
I think it was jwz who said something like "every program expands until it can
read email" (I'm sure I'm butchering it).

~~~
sparky
Not butchering it at all, really:
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html>

“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which
cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." -- Jamie Zawinski

~~~
graywh
So is an update needed? s/read mail/\0 and\/or chat/

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orborde
The Pidgin instructions are incorrect. The "Local Alias" field should be set
to your name, not "Facebook Chat", as this field controls what name is printed
next to your messages in your local chat window.

Unless your name is actually "Facebook Chat", of course.

~~~
etfb
What instructions? I couldn't find any, and so I can't authenticate. In
particular, I have no idea what the correct server would be.

~~~
rlpb
Quick answer: use userid@chat.facebook.com without SSL/TLS. If you don't have
a userid you need to create one and log out of Facebook and back in again
first.

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swolchok
My friend lists correspond to privacy settings, not human-friendly groups
(just photos, nothing, professional contacts). They should divorce friend
lists from chat groups.

~~~
whatusername
I'm pretty sure that Group:Person is a many-to-many relationship.

I have friends in multiple groups.

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xenonite
wow. Facebook will now know when, where and how long you are online.

~~~
blasdel
They already do, and have for years. Have Facebook open in a tab anywhere?
They know.

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aw3c2
Using it seems to force the on-site chat to be enabled.

