Facebook Chat – A Complete Tutorial

Chatting with your Facebook friends from your browser is not really a user friendly way of chatting. You obviously know the difference between chatting with a Yahoo or Gtalk IM client and chatting from your browser window.

There is a feature available in Facebook using which you can connect the IM clients like pidgin to your Facebook account. If you are a Mac user, you can also use Adium and iChat. Pidgin is available for Windows, Linux and Mac and it is the best choice.

The first thing that you need to do is to choose a chat user name for Facebook. A Facebook username is not created when you open the Facebook account. You will have to create one.

You need to edit your settings and choose a Facebook username which can be done by visiting the below link:

http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?settings&alias=1

You can also do it by clicking on ‘Account’ from the top right side of your profile. Click ‘Accounts’ – ‘Account settings’. Under ‘username’ click ‘Change’.

 You can either choose the suggested username or enter a desired username. If the username is available, you will be able to use it. You cannot change your username once you choose it, so remember to make sure that it is the one you want.

You need Pidgin to start chatting. Go the below url and download the latest version of Pidgin:

http://www.pidgin.im/

Pidgin supports the following chat networks:

 AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MXit, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr

For Facebook support, it says that you need to download an additional plug in for Pidgin. But it actually works without any plug in if you follow the instructions given below correctly.

Installation wizard is simple. You will need to be connected to the internet to install Pidgin (if you are using the default online installer) as it will download the essential set up files during the installation.

The installation may take a while depending on your download speed, so be patient. If installation breaks in the middle of the download with an error, then download and run the offline installer instead:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin/files/Pidgin/pidgin-2.7.2-offline.exe

Once Pidgin is installed, open Pidgin and it will ask you to add an account. You can do it right away or click ‘close’ and do it later.

If you want to connect your Facebook to Pidgin, follow these instructions:

1. Click ‘Accounts’ and ‘Manage Accounts’
2. In ‘Protocol’ select ‘XMPP’
3. In ‘Username’ field, enter the Facebook username that you created for chat.
4. In domain, type ‘chat.facebook.com’ without quotes
5. In ‘Resource’ type ‘Pidgin’ without quotes and enter your Facebook password
6. Go to the ‘Advanced’ tab and uncheck ‘Require SSL/TLS’
7. Make sure that ‘Connect port’ is ‘5222’
8. In ‘Server Name’ type ‘chat.facebook.com’
9. Click ‘Save’ and you are done..

You are ready to chat now! Within a few seconds it will show all of your online contacts in pidgin.

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