I hope this is a built-in feature to facebook, and not an application developed by some other company which would require everyone of your friends to also add before it could be of any use.

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MSN (or Windows Live) effectively have a monopoly of messaging in the UK and Yahoo messenger and AIM messenger dominating the US. There would have to be a good reasons for the millions of happy instant messaging users to switch over.

Having read more on this on other sites it appears to be a application that you would have to add, produced by a different company. Current on-line messaging services are a bit rubbish, and i suspect this will be a poor clone of these on-line services.

I anticipate that this application will not take off. It will probably be added to clutter up the profiles of people who currently have 40+ other useless apps on their page.

The most you'll probably ever hear of this again will be from those distant 'friends' (who your not sure you even know) who will try adding you to it every day, along with those other 'supper wall' applications and 'zombie' invitations.

If Facebook however were to release their own instant messaging ability that would be a completely different matter. I suspect a carefully built-in feature, ideally with a standerlone IM program to complement the on-line facility would take off, and could pose a serious challenge to current IM programs.

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I think an IM would have a negative effect on the way facebook works. One of the best things about facebook is the concept of the wall and leaving a message just for the sake of it. With an IM, it would take focus of the wall and profile and more conversations would happen behind closed doors. Just my opinion.

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Good grief, what is the point of this? As if people don't have enough IM options already? As if Facebook users don't have enough ways to communicate? I hope this doesn't take off. I hope I don't have to spend all my time with Facebook open. Wait, make that: I won't.

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The only reason this might take off is because everyone will have it. I remember back in middle school a few of my friends and I would talk using MSN messenger but since 90% of our school still had AOL internet everyone ended up switching over to AIM just so we could talk to our friends. Since all my friends have facebook, this might just work.

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I think you do us a disservice, Chris, by not mentioning that this is not a feature being added to Facebook by Zuckerberg & Co., this is yet another application being developed by a third party, and has no affiliation with or support from Facebook, Inc.

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I think IM will be a perfect fit for Facebook.

I just wonder how people with hundreds or even thousands of friends will deal with the fact that they can be IM'd at any moment by all of those people.

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