Right now we’re building a Jabber/XMPP interface for Facebook Chat. In the near future, users will be able to use Jabber/XMPP-based chat applications to connect to Facebook Chat to:

* Communicate with their friends
* See which of their friends are online and view their profile pictures
* Set their statuses

-David Reiss, Facebook Engineer

Facebook announced that their Chat platform will soon be available via Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). This is also known as Jabber. Jabber is a way to run chat programs and message without being monitored by companies like AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google. Jabber can be run on your own servers.

Several instant messager developers have already found ways to integrate Facebook Chat into their own clients. Digsby found out how to connect Facebook Chat to their client, but I am currently getting authenciation errors [comment if you are also]. Adium is a Mac-only IM client that found a way to connect Facebook chat.

Facebook Chat’s Jabber support launch date is unknown.