Microsoft Bets People Use Facebook Chat: Adds to Live Messenger
Microsoft Live Messenger is the latest to integrate Facebook chat, meaning you can talk it up with your Facebook friends directly from Microsoft’s instant messaging client, according to a report on allfacebook. This integration is a passive and useful way in which Microsoft can utilize the social network into which it invested millions, and further solidifies Facebook chat as a standard and widespread communication tool amongst a majority of users.
As important as this step is for both Microsoft and Facebook, Microsoft wasn’t the first to integrate Facebook chat, Digsby was. And even in the excessive world of cross-over chat clients, Digsby has managed to stand its own. As IM services are better supporting one another, you can pretty much use any major client to chat with just about anyone you need to talk to, but the third-party support for Facebook chat will be especially useful for most users, as it doesn’t require you to remain logged into your actual Facebook page in your browser.As handy as Facebook chat is, with its sleek similarities in appearance and functionality to Gchat, it’s far more accessible and useful as an integrated feature within other IM services. Nevertheless, such integration of browser-based applications is doing a great deal to further the cause of desktop clients like Live Messenger.
