Facebook Chat Preemptively Destroys Your Final Grades
Just in time to stop you from doing any work on your finals, Facebook is rolling out it’s new “Chat” feature over the next few days. Already launched in many major college networks, the feature allows you to instant message through the Facebook network. I assume it will launch on GW’s campus with in the next day or so, but until then, the blog Inside Facebook gave us outsiders a sneak peak. Here’s the gist of it:
A toolbar will appear at the bottom of your Facebook page that will display any incoming Chat messages and how many of your friends are online. There is no need to make a buddy list and you can only IM people you are friends with. Similar to GTalk in Gmail, you can click the message to expand and read it inside your browser.
You can also pop out the chat feature to make a whole window affair.
Facebook Insider has a much more comprehensive look at everything, but I thought I’d give you a synopsis.
This is probably one of the biggest moves Facebook has made in a long time. By changing Facebook from a static website, to a real-time message client, they are going to drastically increase the amount of time people leave their Facebook pages open. They are combining the two social tools people use the most: IM and Social Networking. While the Facebook community tends to be very skeptical of change, I have a feeling this feature will be widely loved.
However, expect a good deal of backlash when Facebook completely changes the way you see profiles later this spring. They are adding three tabs to profiles, and combining the Mini-Feed and the Wall features.
While I initially thought this was a rather stupid move, it now makes complete sense. The Chat feature will certainly become the most used form of communication on Facebook, and will make the use of the wall almost unnecessary. If you can communicate a stupid inside joke from the night before through IM, why would you want to post it on their wall? Sure, the wall will still be used for public embarassment and humorous laugh jokes, but any sort of important conversation would most likely be left private.
Regardless, expect quite a few more drunken IMs to the cute kid in your Logic class.
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