Facebook Chat via 3rd Party Application

Having grown up with instant messaging as an integral part of communication (yes, I’m of that generation that would rather IM, Text or E-Mail than actually use a phone to make a call) I’ve obviously noticed that pretty much nobody uses AIM and those other chat protocols that we all grew up with. Just for kicks I logged into my AIM account to find maybe 3 people on my buddy list actually online. While protocols like Skype have made a dent in the market, having cracked the voice and video chat world, the big player now is actually none other than our illustrious Facebook. Continuing that trend of rooting itself in absolutely everything anyone does, pretty much everyone has a Facebook account, making it the ideal medium to keep in touch.

That said, there’s nothing more annoying than having to sit there with those little popup windows in the bottom of the Facebook UI while trying to hold a conversation… enter, the jack-of-all-trades chat application, Pidgin. Using the XMPP protocol option in Pidgin you can map your Facebook user account to the IM client, allowing you to chat with any of your Facebook friends outside of the Facebook UI. Simply add a new account, and set the following fields.