Looks like DU and its surrounding networks finally got the chat feature rolled out today on Facebook. I'm not sure how I feel about it, personally.
One girl made this discovery before my Human Rights class started. "Oh my God! Facebook has chat now! There's a buddy list and everything! Everybody get on. This is going to change everything." (In reference to chatting throughout class. This didn't end up happening, though, since the professor let us have a bit of class outside, instead.)
The guy sitting next to her just scoffed and made a pretentious remark about Facebook becoming MySpace all over again--ever since Apps, and now chat.
Three people have initiated chat sessions with me as if the feature had been there since the beginning. It's convenient, and drop-dead simple, so it'll probably be a success. Unfortunately, like the rest of Facebook, it's still a completely closed system, so no integration with desktop applications like Adium (Mac) or Pidgin (PC), which is a deal breaker for me.
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Here's a link to the Facebook blog, which happens to have something to say about Facebook chat.
One of my friends brought up the chat feature at breakfast, saying that it just flat-out scares her, since the window is apparantly unavoidable, popping up on top of one's other windows. She said that every time she would get a messgage, it would make her jump, and wasn't too fond of it, but "After all, if I put myself as offline/unavailable, doesn't that just defeat the purpose?"
I thought that this was interesting, because if you don't want something, you should be able to go without it, and let others know; it was interesting because she felt obligated to leave it up for the sake of others. I thought it was funny, and was wondering what anyone else thought about it; do you only have an IM service for the sake of others? What implications do you think this facebook outlet will have (i.e. pointless, more fb stalking, etc), since people who IM probably already use applications such as AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Trillian, Audium, etc.
I agree with Ruben's friend in that the new chat feature pretty much just scares me more than anything. I had heard some friends in Boulder talking about it just over a week ago, and I was kind of concerned as to why I wasn't able to be involved, but now that it is available to me I'm not sure I like it at all. The whole premise just kind of freaks me out. It seems as though you can't hide. When used in conjunction with the new "friends you might want" thingy, I feel like the most random people are coming otu of the wood work to say hullo. It kills me because I feel as though I am being haunted by the host of Christmas past. The real clincher for me though, was when my boss at mtvu in NYC messaged me to give me my nex assignment instead of emailing...it probably shouldn't weird me out so much but it does. I feel as though we are losing the personal space of the chain of command and becoming almost too connected with those who might merely be acquaintances. Maybe I just have some Friend List house-cleaning to do.
I think a lot of people stay available via IM so they are always available to the people they work with. Especially in media-related jobs. But what's the advantage of Facebook chat over AIM or bonjour or the rest?
I think it was just the next step for Facebook. They're going to constantly be generating new content and features, otherwise things will stagnate. I don't know about you guys, but I stopped using instant messengers about my freshman year of high-school, but that may be due to the fact that I went to boarding school and the packet shaper on the network prevented usage of instant messengers to a mere two hours a day.
Consequently, I don't have many people's screen names, so having EVERYONE I'm friends with at my fingertips without the effort of adding them to lists is pretty convenient.
Chat is strange to me. I wrote about it as well, and its just interesting top hear other people's stories about how they encounter facebook and its applications. There are some really funny youtube videos about the facebook applications and how people are getting really sick of it.
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