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Facebook Now Supports Jabber/XMPP

Posted by timothy on from the cross-pollination-nation dept.

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.

30 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Steam Chat by bucky0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Steam Chat by Hadlock · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Came here to post this, found out I was beaten by the FP. Are you listening Valve???
       
      Somebody mod this up. Between gchat and steam, that covers 90% of my non-buisness e-socialization. Also it'd be nice to message the server admin on his phone to rcon in and reboot the server when he's not at his computer (never, it seems like).

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    2. Re:Steam Chat by vegiVamp · · Score: 2, Funny

      Do not press this button.

      --
      What a depressingly stupid machine.
  2. plausible deniability at work by mwilliamson · · Score: 2, Funny

    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. ;-)

  3. Federation? by Denis+Lemire · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Federation? by Cozminsky · · Score: 2, Informative

      Given that the interserver federation in xmpp doesn't scale well ( see http://about.psyc.eu/Jabber#Scalability ), I'm guessing the thought of federation is too scary an option for facebook. 60% of the packets in an xmpp network are presence packets and xmpp uses an extremely naive way of distributing these (i.e. it sends an xmpp presence message for each user in the buddy list, even if many of the users are on the same xmpp server and the presence packet could be only sent once for all of them and exploded by the server at the other end). This probably wouldn't be too much of an issue if not many people have buddies on other xmpp servers, but could be disastrous if it becomes popular. I'm guessing they'd also be reticent to do this because it would decrease their lockin of users, if you don't need a facebook account to talk to facebook users why would you bother using facebook.

    2. Re:Federation? by paul248 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If the XMPP protocol sucks, can't it be fixed? Surely the servers should be able to negotiate the latest supported version to enable new features.

    3. Re:Federation? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This probably wouldn't be too much of an issue if not many people have buddies on other xmpp servers, but could be disastrous if it becomes popular

      No, that's not the issue. It's a problem if lots of people have multiple buddies on the same remote server. XMPP was designed to follow the email model, where you have lots of small servers (for a few people, maybe a company, possibly for users of an ISP who don't have another server they can use). In this case, it is entirely reasonable to send a copy of the presence stanza to each remote server. It's only if most of your contacts are on the same server, but it is not the server that you are using, where this is a problem. In that case, there will be some redundant server-to-server data.

      Saying that this means that it 'doesn't scale well' is hyperbole to put it mildly. Even the article you link to doesn't say that, it simply says that it's possible to improve the scalability. I run a Jabber server with just a few users and, although my numbers for stanzas reflect theirs, they are misleading. Most presence stanzas that I receive are quite small compared to message and info-query stanzas, so the numbers are very different when you look at the total bandwidth used by each one. The shortest message stanza that I could find in my log was 20% longer than the longest presence stanza. A typical message stanza is 200-300% the size of a typical presence stanza.

      Note that, if both servers support XEP-33, then this problem doesn't exist at all; they can use the extended addressing to send a single copy of the stanza to the remote server, without any modification to the client or the core protocol.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  4. Re:No Kopete? by Denis+Lemire · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They've included generic Jabber account details. You should be able to add Facebook to Kopete with this information. Is there really a need for specific step-by-step hand-holding for every client?

  5. No security by scott_karana · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:No security by darkpixel2k · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      Yeah--that's a big "What the fuck, facebook?"....in this day and age, it's tough to find XMPP software that flat-out doesn't support TLS. Even rolling your own in Python supports TLS...

      --
      There's no place like ::1 (I've completed my transition to IPv6)
    2. Re:No security by Hurricane78 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      LOL. What would be the point in using encryption to connect to a server that is not trustworthy in the first place?
      Besides: Is you e-mail encrypted?

      And it’s far from the worst WTF.
      The worst WTF is, that in order to use it, you have to give them your phone number!!!
      Yeah right. What’s next? A body cavity search?

      Luckily I don’t have to, so I won’t. Facebook can seriously just fuck right off!

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  6. Re:No Kopete? by socceroos · · Score: 4, Funny

    There is for Kopete, because it will make us KDEers feel important.

  7. XMPP keeps getting more support by Vyse+of+Arcadia · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:changes by Ultra64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television

    Don't be that guy.

  9. Re:Yet another IM. . . by hldn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    and if IM worked like email we'd get messages all day long about how to make our penises bigger.

    --
    http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
  10. Re:Yet another IM. . . by Denis+Lemire · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's the whole point of XMPP. If all IM was XMPP then IM WOULD work like e-mail. For this to work, Facebook still needs to enable Federation but it's a huge step in the right direction. The world needs more XMPP networks. Once the number of XMPP IM users outnumber the users of legacy "cluster-f**k" proprietary protocols it will become common sense to drop the proprietary garbage in order to gain interoperability with everyone else. What a nice utopia that would be. :)

  11. Re:changes by socceroos · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm not, thats about television.........

  12. Bitlbee and other gateways by qreeves · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  13. Re:changes by JustOK · · Score: 5, Funny

    dude, dissing FaceBook on ./ AND getting modded Troll for it is an awesome feat!

    --
    rewriting history since 2109
  14. Re:changes by turbotroll · · Score: 3, Insightful

    does that mean you have no friends too? ;)

    I don't, for instance. I only have people I hate slightly less then the others, but that isn't same as the widely accepted definition of "friends".

  15. Re:changes by mysidia · · Score: 2, Funny

    He's too busy writing a GUI interface in visual basic to see if he can track the killer's IP address.

  16. Re:Quality of Service by dlgeek · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't know about the stability of chat in general (I often notice outages where it's completely unavailable), but it should fix the laggy-state issue you're concerned about. Your issue is caused by the fact that to create an AJAX client, you basically have to constantly poll the server from the client to get state updates. With XMPP, you can push state-change notifications so they happen almost instantly.

  17. Re:changes by AmonTheMetalhead · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The site is just a tool, like all tools it can be used & abused. I use FB, but i'm very selective to what i put on there

  18. Re:Yet another IM. . . by dangitman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What a nice utopia that would be. :)

    More mindless chit-chat is the exact opposite of utopia.

    --
    ... and then they built the supercollider.
  19. Please don't stop by Kupfernigk · · Score: 3, Insightful
    XMPP is the future, but it will only be the future so long as the pressure is kept up to get service providers to adopt open standards. The moment they see an advantage in lock-in they will adopt proprietary "extensions".

    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."
  20. Localization problems by Kooothor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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

  21. Re:changes by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It meets (and exceeds) the basic functional requirements for a "television".

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  22. Re:Yet another IM. . . by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You say mindless chit-chat, I say social interaction... Do you never just shoot the breeze with a friend? You know, just kick back and relax and chat about nothing in particular?

    --
    It's official. Most of you are morons.
  23. Re:changes by Tetsujin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As if we need a reminder that we'll be mocked if we opt out of the all-seeing-eye brainwashing box by snow cone heads.

    "all-seeing-eye brainwashing box" isn't by snow cone heads, it's by Magnavox...

    Anyway, the mockery isn't directed at people who don't watch TV, it's directed at people who act superior because they don't watch TV...

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.