Facebook is one of the hottest SNS; you could share recent update, photos, videos and a lot more to anyone who is permitted to see your updates. From the changing Facebook layouts, it’s not hard to see that Facebook focus on it’s web-based chatting system a lot. With the new Facebook layout, you could know who is online at this moment (and browsing on Facebook of course) from the “Friends Online” list on the left pane; moreover, you could find the chatting window is located on the bottom right corner of your browser for most of the people’s chatting habit.

Do you ever have friends that never go on MSN or other Instant Messaging software BUT they do spend their life on Facebook and chatting like there is no tomorrow? They seems to be just so keen on chatting with Facebook’s small chatting window and not the real software.

Of course there is advantages of Facebook Chat:

1. It’s web-based so you could use it whenever you can access internet;
2. No platform limit; despite you are using Windows, Mac, Linux or any other desktop OS, you will see almost identical chatting system.

The cons side of web-based chatting system is that:

1. You can’t keep your history. To some people, this might be a good feature, but to most of us, we would like to keep the conversation history just in case we might forget some of the key information.
2. Facebook Chat is still not very stable.

For those who need to contact the Facebook but not MSN friends, here is what you need to know to talk to them without switching your or their habbit:

You could basically set this up with iChat, Adium on Mac, Pidgin on Mac/PC/Linux and ANY Instant Messaging software that support XMPP or Jabber protocol. For iChat, Adium and Pidgin users, you could visit Facebook Chat for the detail setting, for any other users, here are the detail for the set up:

1. Start your instant message program and locate the menu where you can add a new account (usually in preferences or settings).

2. Create a new account by entering the following info:

• Protocol: XMPP or Jabber
• Username: <your Facebook username>
• Domain: chat.facebook.com
• Jabber ID: <your Facebook username>@chat.facebook.com
• Password: <your Facebook password>

3. Enter the following server info, as requested:

• Port: 5222
• Server: chat.facebook.com
• Use SSL/TLS: no
• Allow Plaintext Authentication: no

OK, there you go. happy chatting on Facebook Chat without being on Facebook.