Facebook Chat Launches - Tour & First Impressions

[spanglechick]

I reactivated my facebook yesterday, cos I wanted to see some pics from work that were only on there. I was suprised at the amount of people that still seem to be using it regularly, I thought it had died off like myspace has. Now looks covered in crap though, loads of applications like "super wall", that are just filled with spam. Why does anyone use these when all they contain is shitty chain letters and spam?

i know - my 'super wall' (and 'funwall', iirc) got taken down very quickly, because they are awful - and i was getting very concerned about 'friends' who thought i wanted to see some lolfunni video clip, or read some crass schmalzy amerisentiment about angels .

But I still use face book (briefly) every day. I change my status update, play scrabble, and check invites to events and whose birthday it is and stuff. Last night i ended up doing a little messaging with milly molly - was ok - less irritating then msn with all its whistles and bells.

I really like the status updates. I get a tiny snapshot of what's going on in friends' lives - or just reminded to think about them. It's pleasant.

 

[Strumpet]

Same here spangles

I like the lil chat thing. Tried it last night. Easy, cute.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Yep it's very neat. I've been chatting with various people since yesterday and all have been very positive about it. Most have mentioned they'll probably use this now over MSN too.

 

[DotCommunist]

I reactivated my facebook yesterday, cos I wanted to see some pics from work that were only on there. I was suprised at the amount of people that still seem to be using it regularly, I thought it had died off like myspace has. Now looks covered in crap though, loads of applications like "super wall", that are just filled with spam. Why does anyone use these when all they contain is shitty chain letters and spam?

I recieved an email from a facebook aquaintance warning me about a virus. It was word for word the same email
I recieved 4 frigging years ago.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

heh. anyone remember second life?

Well, er, yes, but I don't see the connection with Facebook... I also remember email and Google Docs and courgettes.

 

[electric.avenue]

If facebook is a bit yesterday, which social networking site is the generally more popular one now?

What irritates me a bit about the social networking sites is that they seem to demand a bit too much personal info, like dob and so on. With MySpace it appears to be compulsory to display yr age along with yr profile.

 

[ChrisFilter]

Facebook usage doesn't seem to have dropped off at all in my circles. We still use it for photos and events all the time.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Me either, people don't check it every hour of the day but there's still a great deal of usage. Another day another chat or two, both users loving the new chat feature.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I'm a bit leery of the "social networking" buzzphrase. It's a bit of a loose cluster concept for a whole lot of different sites that have all sorts of different functionality. Facebook is not Myspace which is not Livejournal which is not Blogger which is not etc etc. People will call all sorts of things "social networking" - is Twitter a social networking system? is it bollocks.

Friend lists and interest groups and regular updates have been around forever, because that's the sort of thing people like doing, communicating. Newsgroups do it, email does it, boards do it, we've had Yahoo Groups and all that. It's just a question of different functionality that makes it convenient to do something important to a large enough group of people.

I can't see Facebook dropping off the radar for a while even if it isn't geek-trendy any more; it does a lot of things that a lot of people find convenient. It's lost a bit of initial buzz but it's a solid product. (I say this as somebody who doesn't really like it - I simply don't want to do the stuff that Facebook is for.)

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Facebook to Launch Jabber/XMPP Support for Chat

FB reading u75?

Facebook will announce momentarily via their developer blog support of Facebook chat via Jabber and XMPP. These are two of the primary standards for instant messaging protocol on the web. The new format will enable developers to integrate chat within their applications both internally and externally to Facebook. This update will also enable developers to update a user’s status via the new protocol.

While a number of instant messaging desktop clients have already figured out a way to access Facebook’s chat system, this will enable anybody to access Facebook chat more efficiently. By providing Jabber/XMPP access to developers, Facebook also hopes to further extend the reach of Facebook as a mainstream instant messaging platform.

 

[hendo]

I really like the status updates. I get a tiny snapshot of what's going on in friends' lives - or just reminded to think about them. It's pleasant.

What Spangles said. FB won't change the world and God knows why the site is worth billions, but it is nice.

 

[editor]

If you're using it, you should read this article pronto:

Facebook Chat is the least secure and privacy-protective of the lot. As far as we can determine, it fails to use encryption to protect logging in (thus passwords can be gleaned) and fails to secure the conversations, too. We'd like to tell you more about Facebook Chat, but the company sent us a one-line e-mail message saying it was refusing to answer the same questions that its competitors did with little fuss.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9962106-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

 

[Crispy]

They're going to change the system and base it on Jabber, which is a much better way forward

http://www.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=110

(note - it's not clear if this will change the fundamentals)