Social.im Lets you Chat with Facebook Friends

January 10th, 2008 | Published in Facebook, IM

Social.im is a new instant messaging client that lets you chat with your Facebook contacts over a variety of IM networks. Even though your friends are spread across several different IM networks like Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google, etc., Social.im is betting on the fact that most of them are on Facebook. What makes Social.im different than other Facebook apps is that you don’t run it in the browser - it’s actually a standalone application that logs into Facebook, whether or not your browser window is open. Your friends on Facebook also have to download and install Social.im in order for you to chat with them, which may be a drawback. Not everyone wants to install additional software on their PC…even if you do! It would be nice if your friends had the option to either chat with you via a web browser window or the standalone app. As far as IM apps go, Social.im is pretty basic - no video, no file sharing, no voice. However, its Facebook integration lets you check your new Facebook messages, pokes, friend requests, and wall posts via buttons at the bottom of the IM client. Clicking the buttons opens up a web browser window and takes you to the requested page. Currently, Social.im only works on Windows, but a Mac version is supposed to be arriving soon.