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Facebook Now Supports Jabber/XMPP
supersloshy writes "Facebook Chat has so far only been meant to be used in a web browser, and instant messaging applications have had a hard time implementing its undocumented protocol. Today, Facebook is making this job much easier by enabling support for XMPP to access its chat service. AOL's AIM and the Empathy Instant Messenger are also including pre-set Facebook options, due to already supporting XMPP."
Here are instructions for setting up XMPP Facebook chat with popular instant messaging clients, including Pidgin and Adium.
first :), finally, facebook does something right besides the creation of the site itself
Man, if steam chat would support jabber, I would be a step closer to combining all my communication to the same program. Valve probably wouldn't do it though :/
-Bucky
They havn't included Kopete, which is the default IM ckient in KDE, in the instruction. And I demand they include Kopete. :/
I've been using the pidgin plugin for a while now, but it seems a little flaky. This will be rather nice to have a standards-based protocol. This also means I have plausible deniability now as to whether or not I'm logged into facebook all day. ;-)
Now if only they'd setup federation so people can talk to those on Facebook from their own XMPP domain. This combined with Google Talk can bring XMPP near the critical mass of users necessary to finally abandon the proprietary protocols I've despised for so long. Good riddance Windows/MSN/Live Messenger! I look forward to the not-so-distant future where everyone can communicate on IM without having accounts with several non-interoperable IM networks. Wishful thinking?
I couldn't help but notice the conspicuous instructions to "Uncheck TLS/SSL security" in each of the clients.
I really hope that doesn't come back to bite anyone in the ass, there's enough spam on other parts of Facebook already.
And I'm glad to hear it! Everyone seems to be moving towards one open protocol (starting with Google Talk) instead of the sea of protocols out there already.
Just what the world needs. *Another* IM service. I suppose I can see Facebook's reasoning for doing this. . . they want to be a complete 'social' solution, and don't want to be reliant on MSN, AOL, Google, or anyone else for their IM service. I suppose, all things considered, that at least opening it up with XMPP is fairly 'enlightened' of them, but it really seems like the whole 'genre' of Instant Messaging platforms has been one big cluster-f**k since day one. If email worked like IM, we'd all have to have 10 email accounts.
When are they going to support XMPP server-to-server communication so I can chat with my Facebook friends while logged onto a non-facebook XMPP server (that isn't AOL or another big org)?
I tried their Pidgin instructions (to connect to the Facebook XMPP server and use my Facebook account to chat), and it failed: 503: Service Unavailable Slashdotted?
When they (like Google Talk) support full server-to-server, THAT will be a good day.
I find it even funnier that "its" is used correctly in the second sentence but not the first.
I'm surprised this hasn't already come up, considering this is geek central I would have hoped more people were using Bitlbee. Facebook has added this annoying caveat to being able to login via jabber: You must be able to login via a web browser on the same host as the one you're trying to setup jabber with; this rules out public Bitlbee and other gateway services, as well as boxes that don't have X installed on them (Facebook requires you use an 'approved' browser, meaning lo (e)l[inks|ynx] for you).
Logging in: Authenticated, requesting buddy list Logging in: Message from unknown handle chat.facebook.com: > You're signing in from a location we're not familiar with. That's no problem, but we do want to make sure no one is using your Facebook account without permission. Please take a few moments to review your recent Facebook activity. Start by logging in to facebook.com from any computer. (For your security, your Facebook account will be unavailable until you complete these steps.) Couldn't log in: Account and resource used from a different location Logging in: Signing off..
Guess that means I'll continue on with FB chat disabled, like I need yet another IM that I won't use anyway. Google Buzz looks more interesting anyway, as it is integrated with my email and other cloud data (privacy issues blah blah blah, I know) and their jabber services actually work wherever I want them to. Last I checked, my password identified me as me, why the extra unnecessary step? Because they want you to actually read their shovelware app spam to make money.
FWIW, Facebook is operating a gateway that allows xmpp users to connect to the Facebook chat service. For the time being, xmpp features like presence, capabilities discovery, file transfers and calling are not available.
Does this mean that facebook chat will be any more reliable than it was before, or will it still be buggy as heck? I got so tired of "oh sorry, we lied, this person isn't actually online at the moment..." that I signed out months ago.
Also, yay for Pidgin! I upgraded from 2.6.1 to .5, but once I remembered my password it seems to work fine so far.
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I don't think this is so revolutionary for existing Pidgin users. I've had the Facebook plugin (http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat) for Pidgin for a while now. What reasons are there to switch from this to XMPP?
I demand irc.facebook.com !
they said they had this working forever ago didn't they? well, at least they finally put out.
Yeah, they offer Jabber support. But if you want to use it, you have to have a user name.
But to have that, YOU HAVE TO GIVE THEM YOUR PHONE NUMBER!
Yeah, right. Not in a thousand years!!!
WTF? Fuck you, Failbook!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
what a move! Now finally I can stop evangelism for xmpp. Now I instantly have more friend on xmpp than on skype. Nice!
So did the Internet2.edu, billion dollar making companies which XMPP became de-facto standard, Google and Facebook giants pick the wrong protocol to begin with?
Are you insane? Did you even browse Facebook pages? If you have anything regarding privacy in your mind, you don't join such networks to begin with...
It is a network requiring your REAL NAME, people share their private matters on their publicly available pages no matter how hard Facebook tries to educate them or force them to set their options.
It is not for your taste if you have concerns about sharing your private information. Not mine either but I don't swear at them, I just pity the 2010's sense of privacy.
Jabber/XMPP is designed in a way that no "central big company" server would be required, just like e-mail. You sound like people not choosing from thousands of free/paid IMAP/POP3/WWW mail servers and whine about gmail's horrible privacy issues. Don't like it? Use something else.
Give them digits: (000) 000-0000
That's only because timothy corrected the latter: http://tech.slashdot.org/submission/1171176/Facebook-Now-Supports-JabberXMPP
A proud member of the Onion-in-Hand alliance
XMPP is the best thing to happen in the messaging protocol world for many years, we need to make sure that it continues to develop (especially server to server) and be as widely deployed as possible.
Disclaimer: Our company produces a system management product that uses XMPP as its first line fault notification. I would prefer even the most backward MS shop to have heard of it, and not to confuse it with the horror that is MSN.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Hey, I'm experiencing troubles while trying to connect to the xmpp facebook account with Finch from my shell in Germany. Facebook tells me I connect from an unusual location (usually I connect from France or Sweden), and that it isn't bad but they block the chat anyway.... -_-' Anyone has had the same troubles ? How to resolve it ? Thanks. Screen : http://nsa13.casimages.com/img/2010/02/12/10021201582580101.png
Hi,
I managed to get bitlbee to log in ( i've written some php to log into facebook using curl for me from the server in question, and it spoofs the user agent. It was tricky but do-able )
but the downside is, all the usernames show up as u987654321 or whatever so you still have no idea who is who anyway. :( boo, so still no real fb chat in bitlbee for now
I logged in with Pidgin.
Its weird everyone logs in with the username "bckwrds". Really - http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/chat.php
Too bad SSL / TLS isn't supported.
Does Empathy have OTR encryption yet?
If not, it is useless.
When they support encryption, I'll give it a try.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Just took a look at the instructions mentioned in the summary. Unfortunately you have to verify your account to pick a user name - and in order to do so you have to give them your cellphone number. I'd rather live with the proprietary protocols, thank you very much.
This would instantly allow me to use my usual desktop chat client to connect to non-tech people who I am friends with.
But, Kopete on Kubuntu 9.10 does not work. I get this error message:
"There was a negotiation error. Unsupported protocol version. XMPP 1.0 is required."
Is there a solution to this?
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I was worried about this, too. I sniffed the connection, and it turns out that they use SASL during the authentication process - so your password is safe, though your communications are not.
At least I presume your data does not get encrypted - didn't test that...
I look forward to finally having a standard protocol IM that I can avoid. Until than I'm forced to avoid IM using proprietary protocols.
Couldn't we put the correct usage of "it's" in a FAQ or something and stop talking about it here?
The sign-in is encrypted; the messages are not.
Read all about it. It's nasty.
http://nat.org/blog/2009/12/powered-by-immigrants/