Facebook is building a Jabber/XMPP interface for Facebook Chat, which means users can access their Facebook friends list from other instant messaging clients such as Trillian, Apple's iChat or Pandion, not just the Facebook website. [Facebook Developers' Feed]

Facebook chat will no doubt improve the sex lives of college students everywhere. Asking for someone's AIM is totally obvious; it's like the oldest move in the Web 1.0 book. Facebook message flirting takes forever. So Facebook chat just may become the most subtle and fastest way to get laid in college. The only problem is that I'm not in college. I'm an adult who uses Facebook to judge the lives of people I knew in college. Facebook chat reminds me that I'm old. But that's only part of the problem.

Buried on the bottom edge of your browser, Facebook's new instant-messaging feature "is meant to be really unobtrusive and there when you need it," explains Facebook project manager Peter Deng in a video demonstrating Facebook Chat, below. We know it's unobtrusive because Mark Zuckerburg put Facebook's easily missed Beacon opt-out notifications in the same spot. More details on Facebook Chat revealed weeks ahead of schedule in the clip below.

Facebook will launch Facebook Chat, a Web-based IM system built into Facebook, in the coming weeks, flack Meredith Chin confirmed today. There go startup Social.im's hopes for an acquisition. Chin wouldn't share any more details. (You should. Leaks are good for business, remember.) She also said Facebook would introduce new privacy updates tomorrow, including an option to allow "friends of friends" to share information. I'll start. 25/m/NY.