Facebook is a wonderful tool which enables us to connect to practically anyone we know through the internet. We do add many people through Facebook and keep in touch with them. The chat system in it enables us to chat with anyone who is currently online and browsing through Facebook. I never liked their chat system previously because of the bugs it had. It gives me a sound and pauses my firefox for a few seconds.

Recently Facebook has implemented a new chat system which uses the same protocol as GoogleTalk which is XMPP protocol. Its just a protocol to enable real time communication technology. This means we are actually using this technology when we are chatting through Facebook. When used in connection with a reliable internet service, such as broadband from O2, this technology can greatly improve the experience of using the chat system. OK, lets not get down to much to the technical side and get moving to how to use this technology.
Now we can actually access this XMPP protocol by using any XMPP clients available.
A list of clients can be found at this site : http://xmpp.org/software/clients.shtml

I personally prefer Pidgin, because if supports Windows & Linux plus its quite stable and its light weight. Now lets begin with the tutorial.

First you need to access www.pidgin.im to download Pidgin.
Once you have downloaded it, follow the instruction’s in the installer and install the program.

After installing, run the program and you will see this. If you miss this screen or you want to add other Facebook accounts later on, click on accounts on the menu bar and select manage accounts and you will see this screen.

Click on the add button and on the next screen select XMPP and fill up the details.

Fill up the details required.

Username : Your profile name or your profile id
( e.g. http://www.facebook.com/andrewraj ) – Then ‘andrewraj’ is my username.

Domain : chat.facebook.com

Resource : Pidgin

Password : Your facebook password

Take a look of an example :

Then click on the ‘Advanced’ tab and adjust these details.

1. Untick the Require SSl/TLS checkbox.

Connect Port : 5222

Connect Server : chat.facebook.com

Don’t change the value of File transfer proxies.

Thats it !! You’re done !!
In a few seconds you will be able to see your contacts appear in Pidgin just like this.

Of course some might not like having your facebook chat at all time. Don’t worry since this thing doesn’t bug you as much the facebook chat does. You can disable the notifications and chat whenever you like to.

Its as simple as this. Have fun !!

Resource : Facebook Chat