Just last month Facebook released its new chat feature giving users what they always wanted: yet another separate, non-standard, not-supported-anywhere-else chat network to deal with. But never fear, multi-protocol chat client Digsby has already managed to hack through the isolation of Facebook chat and integrate it alongside the rest of your chat networks.
Like Pigdin, Trillian, Adium and others, Digsby is a multi-network desktop chat client that allows you to connect with your friends regardless of what chat services they use. Unlike the other three, Digsby has managed to include Facebook chat (also unlike the others, Digsby is Windows-only)
Digsby's ability to connect with Facebook chat may be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending how you feel about the massive noise-to-signal imbalance of Facebook chat. Still, if you need to connect with friends that are only on Facebook, Digsby is your only solution (outside visiting the site, but who does that in this day and age?).
It's hard to say what Facebook's intentions are with chat, but it certainly feels like an attempt to create yet another walled garden feature. The company's proprietary chat protocol doesn't support Jabber and doesn't piggyback off any of the other existing IM services like AIM or MSN. There's also no API for developers to tap into (which makes it somewhat incredible that Digsby seems to have pulled it off).
What Facebook and countless other chat providers seem to ignore is that most people don't care about Facebook, its proprietary chat protocol or even any of its special features — we just want to talk to our friends.
And every new network makes that relatively simple request more and more difficult, so kudos to Digsby for solving the problem. At least for now.
[via Lifehacker]
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