Yesterday, Facebook finally launched XMPP support for Facebook Chat. (More about XMPP here.) This is something that they announced that they were working on back in May, 2008 — almost two years ago. After a long time (of mostly silence), here we have it — you can now connect to Facebook using (almost) any XMPP client, including popular “universal” chat clients like Pidgin, Trillian, Adium, Digsby, Miranda, Empathy, etc., using the XMPP support that they already have. This also paves the way for Facebook Chat to become one of the most used IM protocols, up in the ranks with AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live, and Google Talk.
I’m a bit disappointed, but not surprised, that this initial launch of XMPP support comes without support for XMPP federation (“S2S”). If we had S2S support for Facebook Chat, then Facebook users could talk with users on any XMPP/Jabber network, and vice versa. This would also enable a particularly cool bridge between Facebook Chat and Google Talk, which are both based on XMPP, and it might even push AIM and WLM more towards supporting XMPP, so that we could have a truly universal IM network on the Internet. (We have it for e-mail already… why not for IM?)
Of course, Facebook is still about connections to other Facebook users, and all of the group and privacy controls are based on this. So, this is how I picture XMPP federation working with Facebook:
- A user, who we will call “Joe,” uses another XMPP network but wants to talk to Facebook Chat users.
- Joe must have a Facebook account.
- Joe goes to his Facebook account and registers his XMPP handle by adding it to his profile (just like you can add additional e-mail addresses).
- Now, Facebook sends authentication requests from all of the users that Joe can talk to on Facebook Chat to Joe’s XMPP account. Joe can then add them to his other XMPP contact list.
- Now, Joe can talk to Facebook Chat users from his other XMPP account. Facebook Chat users using the web interface will see Joe just like they see any other Facebook user, along with his picture and a link to his profile or whatever. Privacy settings that they have applied to Joe apply to his extra XMPP account too. Since he registered his XMPP handle in his profile, everyone knows who he is, and Facebook makes this connection between his XMPP account and his Facebook account obvious to Facebook Chat users.
There you have it. Simple for Facebook Chat users using the web UI — in fact, the user experience for them doesn’t change at all. And convenient for people who already use another XMPP account to chat (like Google Talk).
Launching XMPP support closed this long-standing bug, which was the highest-voted bug on Facebook’s Bugzilla bug tracker. I’d love to see similar support for the XMPP federation bug!
Update, 10:34 PM:
Just for reference, you can check out Facebook Chat’s XMPP implementation status at IMTrends. Once they support XMPP federation, we should see green checkmarks next to the server-to-server entries (like this one).
Update, February 12, 2010:
Someone actually beat me to filing a bug for XMPP federation support. (Though I am sure I searched for “XMPP” before filing my bug and it didn’t show up.) I’ve changed the link above to point to the earlier bug.
