Just Skins

Facebook is en route to become the next Myspace and there’s no reason why it can’t do so. The growth of Facebook in recent past has been phenomenal and the small campus community from Harvard has now reached some serious number of users. I personally know people for whom Internet is facebook and facebook chat is everything else so I decided to take a look at some of the desktop clients/softwares for Facebook chat.

Digsby has made a huge dent in the space of IM clients with its features, extremely easy user-interface and the diversity of supported social networks. It seems that Digsby had entered this space with the vision statement of becoming one stop shop for everything social and it has indeed managed to do that to some extent. It is by far the best desktop client which supports Facebook chat and it it matters then I’d like to add that it is my default IM client. I just hate the crappy applications that Digsby installs alongwith if you don’t uncheck those applications during installation.

Scrapboy is also a new desktop application which is not an IM client but a multi-purpose tool for Social Networks. It supports three social networks as of now: Orkut, Facebook and Myspace. You can basically do everything from Scrapboy that you otherwise do by going to their website just like we use twitter clients. Scrapboy has managed to squeeze in facebook chat which looks more proper that it does on web.

Palringo is an amazing multi-IM client as well. I’d recommend it to people who dont’t like too much clutter on their desktop. It’s a compact client which takes hardly any space. You might not be able to customize its looks but if you can compromise the eye candy with the fact that it supports facebook chat then it will fit well for you. If you try this one then make sure you talk to its chat bot, Samantha. She is amazing.

Adium is a Mac based IM client and if you are on Mac then there’s little I need to describe here. Adium also supports Facebook chat and it is the Digsby for Mac as of now until Digsby launches its Mac version which is said to be soon.

Social.im does the job of importing your facebook chat on your desktop which gives you an impression of chatting through some desktop IM client. Social.im only supports facebook chat though. It works on both mac and windows but I didn’t had much luck in using it on my Windows 7.

Gabtastik is a Site Specific Browser (SSB) which can be downloaded on your desktop. It works exactly like Mozilla Prism.

Fluid is also a Site Specific Browser (SSB) but it works on Mac.

If you fancy using facebook chat in some online IM application then you may try Meebo which also happens to support Facebook chat.