Facebook IM Rolls Live in Silicon Valley & NYC
Published by Rodney Rumford April 18th, 2008 in Facebook.Facebook IM Rolls Live in Silicon Valley & NYC: OK let me just say that we finally saw the facebook IM service live in Silicon Valley.
Our first impressions: Rating: 
Sweet. Simple. Intuitive. Effective. Nicely Executed.
This service is almost everything that you would expect in an IM service. You can easily see which ones of your friends are online, and have a chat easily. They are rolling the Instant Messaging out slowly to ensure that they keep a good user experience. IM services rolled live across 70 million users is not an easy task. I have not seen any bugs thus far.
I like the way that it displays across the bottom of the page the different conversation that you have open. You also have the options to have notifications show. This is a nice feature and another point of integration and visibility for applications. 
IM is a very efficient tool if it is used in the proper way. How efficient you might ask. Well, in under an hour online today we had a new client reach out to us because we were on line and accessible. But if you have lots of contacts the IM might prove to be a distraction. Use it like you would any other IM. I personally like it because I only give a select group of people my private im contact info on skype and msn. So this allows all my facebook contacts to grab me easily (when i want to be reached).
I wish that the Facebook Instant Messaging service had a few more features:
*Group Chat
*Ability to Send Files/Attachments
*History of Conversations
*Wish it turned www.yoursite.com into a hyperlink without adding http:// first
*Better emoticons so that i can give people thumbs up or a beer in the message
*Ability to im right from the messages area (mail) & that users profile
*Video IM (i am sure this will come in the next 6 months)
My very first IM conversation caught for posterity.
Facebook IM in pop out window
Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook IM
5 Responses to “Facebook IM Rolls Live in Silicon Valley & NYC”
- 1 Pingback on Apr 19th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Great in-depth review of this new feature. Might be what Facebook needs to breathe some life back into the service now that Twitter is all the rage.
Just got my first FB IM this afternoon. I thought the implementation was “OK.” I was using Scrabulous at the time, and that app and IM did not interact well together. I’d like to see the IM window draggable like most other IM clients so I can move it about the workspace.
Video IM in six months? You’ve got to be kidding me. I doubt you’ll even see multi-user chat or file transfers in that time.
Jason,
They could easily acquire a startup that does multiple video chat and integrate it. There are several option in that area. I have seen several startups that can do this well and they are still in alpha. http://www.tokbox.com as an example.
I think it is ambitious, but facebook move like a jackrabbit, quick and nimble.
Joel, Good idea on the drag option. You could also just pop the IM open in a new window as an alternative.
I really like it. But has made be extra careful at work — It can be quite the anti-productivity tool.