Interested in knowing more about the upcoming rollout of Facebook Chat? Check out this hands-on look at Facebook Chat over at Webware.com. The service is currently in beta and is slowly being rolled out to some networks on Facebook (The folks in the Harvard network are already getting this feature supposedly). Facebook Chat won’t be for everyone though. The app will work only within IE 7, Firefox 2.x, and Safari 2 on the PC, and Firefox 2, Safari 2, and Safari 3 on the Mac.
The real question is – will Facebook Chat improve user “stickiness” on Facebook? Maybe.. if at least in the beginning. As the article points out, it’ll certainly be great for users to easily reach out to old classmates or friends from far yonder. However, I also see the following happen:
You: “Hey – long time no chat!!! nice to see you here on Facebook!”
Friend: “Totally! It’s been forever!”
You: “Do you have AIM, Yahoo, MSN or Google Talk?”
Yes.. my point is – there’s just one too many chat clients out there. If Facebook were to enable support for third party instant messenger clients, then we’d be talking! (Facebook Chat would also be a major competitor to meebo too!)
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