Facebook Chat

Using Facebook Chat now is more popular than any other form of communication, in fact in most cities you only have to look at what people are doing on public transport: Everyone is looking and smiling at their smartphone devices whilst using Facebook Chat to catch up with friends.

Previously, in “Facebook Messanger” we have outlined all the technical requirements to enable Facebook Chat on most devices – including PC and Smartphone / Tablet users.

Now we will look at smart ways  to use the worlds most popular chat service:

• Interviews: Often users are not available on LinkedIn and other business related services and we can use Facebook Chat to interview them. This is especially useful in environments where we have low bandwidth, affecting the quality of our video chat.
• Several friends at the same time: Given that the app will display a list of our friends who are online, it is possible to select many friends at the same time and consult with them all about various topics or the same topic. They will simply appear as little windows on a PC screen. There is off course a limitation with smartphones vs PC where we have a much wider screen.
• Use chat as a method to catch up with everyone, regardless of the device they use. It provides a truly cross platform solution.
• Remember: Chat is not an obligation – it is easy to be logged in but to turn it on or off. Many users who are new to Chat may find it daunting as each time they log into Facebook, friends want to hang out and chat.
• Friends may appear in the sidebar or not – this will depend on whether they have the service turned on. The Green dot will show if they are both online and have the service turned on.
• Remember that messages can be deleted from Chat anytime! This service does not look like traditional emails – thus many users are unaware of how easy it is to remove messages and keep their history clean on any device. This is especially useful for users who use public devices but forget to log out.

The various platforms that can access the service: 

Facebook Messenger – Windows based
Pidgin – Windows/Mac/Linux based
Adium – Mac such as iPad and iPod
iChat – Mac for Smartphones (Apple)
Others – Windows/Mac/Linux (for most Asian phones)

Developers verdict: 

We found that it is a very efficient service – one of a kind. Whilst the usability could do with some improvement, there are very few bugs reported and the best thing about Chat is that Facebook has awesome servers which are fast compared to others.