Internet Stuuffs

Facebook Chat

Facebook has done it again…. that is come up with something completely unique that MySpace will most likely steal in the next few weeks and force upon their users.

If you are an avid Facebook user then you most likely have noticed the chat bar that appears at the bottom of the page when you login. It seems that Facebook is trying to give users more ways to interact with their friends (or random people they have added) and thus increase the traffic to their site and length of stays on the site which is good for attracting advertisers.

The chat, while very innovative, has some draw backs. The first one is that unlike most every other thing on facebook, you cant close the chat bar - sure you can go ‘offline’ but the chat object remains there. The only other thing on facebook that you cant close (with ease) is the beacon advertisement. Now the beacon wasn’t always a part of the users page feed, it was added after the page and its style were created. This chat bar will most likely host some sort of add, my guess is on the left end (scrolling text?) or a little javascript text window will pop-up on the top of the bar from time to time (think the text ads in YouTube videos).

Another drawback is that if you like the chat and are having a conversation you better not go onto a ‘non supported’ facebook page - but you dont know what pages are and are not supported. While attempting to get my whooping two friends to talk to me I went to an events page and the chat bar disappeared. In its place a little triangle sign appeared saying that the page didnt support the chat feature. So even if Noah had responded to my funny insights to his current status I wouldn’t have known because I was engrossed in $100 hot dog humor galore.

Of course to fix this problem and surf with ease you could always go to the little guy icon and click ‘pop out chat’ which will make the chat pop-up into its own window (check your pop-up settings).

Also the chat feature doesnt support chat rooms. Facebook must assume that all of their users know each other outside of the website and therefore do not need to provide a space for folks to meet and engage others of similar interest. This is simply not the case, in fact just today a completely random stranger found my profile as a friend of a friend and added me. Of course she was far too good looking for me to believe so I sent her a stupid message and let the friend request sit, only to find out she was real and doesnt have a webcam or website she wants me to visit (w00t!). Facebook should probably, at the very least, allow chat rooms for each network and for the members of said networks to mingle and talk and connect.

The final problem is the load time. Remember you cant shut off the chat application completely. For those of us on a limited internet connection (not me, but maybe you?) that means a longer load time to load up all that javascript that the chat runs on. This doesn’t affect just one page, the chat stays with you and even when it doesn’t function it has to load code to say that it is not functioning. So users with slow internet be prepared for facebook to take a little to a lot longer to load up for you or upgrade your connection if possible.

All in all the feature is great. As a veteran of the internet chat world it’s always good to see the old social standard find new ways to get us to waste our time online. Facebook is most likely still developing this app and who knows by the time you read this might have already addressed any of the things we’ve talked about.

EDIT: After further testing (i.e. one of my two friends replying to me) I discovered that if you are in a conversation with someone and x the window closed when they reply the whole message pops back up again. Imagine someone more popular that me, like say Justine Ezarik, is chatting to someone and has to keep closing windows?

Ok well in her case she might just ‘go offline’ but lets assume she really wants to chat to this hot guy she met (not me obviously) but no one else. The chat doesn’t have a feature to block or otherwise appear ‘offline’ to specific individuals. Its one of those all or nothing things.