First//Look: Facebook Chat

I have been hearing murmurs about Facebook's new chat application for months. Within the past couple of weeks that chatter has intensified as they systematically roll out the service across the community.

Here is a quick video overview of Facebook's new chat service

[Feed readers please click through to the post if you cannot see the video.]

Key takeaways:

• The service is nicely integrated into the site, not overwhelming, seems to be where I thought it would appear in the design
  
• Follows very familiar interaction models of other, more popular chat services
  
• Will be interesting to see if they allow 3rd parties to hook into this to extend the functionality
  
• User control here looks to have been handled correctly, you can turn it off and on
  

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Comments

[Jason Falls]

Thanks for this review Matt. I heard about it as well, but wasn't expecting it. When my first chat friend popped me while logged in, the pop-up scared me. Used to it now, but the odd context freaked me out a bit.

I like it, by the way. Gives me a little extra incentive to stay logged in more.

[Alan]

I find the pop-up version is easier to use - there's an option on there to let you open it in a separate window.

Biggest issue for everyone right now, is etiquette- do you start IM-ing your friends on FB or do you let FB be someplace they can go and play Scrabulous in peace.

I find that I use regular IM less and only with certain people- curious to see how this shakes out.