Two quicks points - your comments on bringing IM to the masses, and in particular ‘I think it could become for instant messaging what the internet explorer icon still is as a browser for many people.’ I fully agree with, and having recently seen the speed of take-up for a friend, who had not used IM services previously, I’d be very interested to see the take-up since Facebook launched the service.

Secondly, what Joshua mentioned is particularly apt and comes off the back off Facebook fairly recently introducing more controls in what groups and circles your contacts should be apart of, and therefore helping control fears of privacy and the whole friend contacts/business contacts divide.

Good post!

Paul

Joshua - to be honest, I wasn’t aware of the plans for friend lists with chat. That would definitely make all of the difference and make the site a lot more appealing to me…

Good post - but something no-one has mentioned is the use of Friend Lists. Although these haven’t been introduced yet into chat, Facebook have said that this will be happening - which will mean you can appear offline or online to work colleagues/weekend buddies/good friends/family etc as you see fit.

This will make a big difference and will, I think, make Facebook the most representative of any social graph out there.

Josh

I always like to think of it like this:

People who I have just met, get my email.
People who I’ve met through a friend or know a little better get my facebook.
People who are friends of mine get my AIM screen name.

So you’d think this would warp my system a bit. But so far it hasn’t. In fact, I really haven’t seen to many people on so far.

It should be interesting :).

For those amongst us that are tech savvy enough to use an IM client I don’t think this is a big deal. However, for my sister who doesn’t know her AIM from her MSN the opportunity to chat to her friends in real time will be huge. Facebook is no longer the thing we used at uni to arrange our nights out and share pictures of the aftermath because now our sister, parents and pet cats are on Facebook.