A free service that enables Facebook users to conduct instant message-based conversations with Facebook friends. Upon the debut of Facebook Chat in 2008, the social networking site added a Chat sidebar that made it easy to initiate Facebook chats as well as Facebook Video Calling video chats.
Facebook Chats supports one-to-one chats as well as the ability to chat with multiple friends via the Facebook groups feature. Most popular standalone instant messaging clients support Facebook Chat, including AOL Instant Messenger, Miranda IM, Pidgin, Skype, Trillian, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.
Facebook also recently introduced a native desktop app for Windows users that enables users to conduct Facebook chats without the need to launch a Web browser and open Facebook.
