Windows Messenger connects to Facebook
The latest beta release of Windows Live Essentials includes the ability for Windows Live Messenger users to chat directly to friends on Facebook.
“Many of you have been asking for Facebook chat, and it’s finally here,” beamed Chris Jones, Vice President, Windows Live Engineering. “More than half of all Messenger customers also use Facebook. With the previous beta, you got a rich social view that brought together all your updates (including those from Facebook) and gave you one place to see and comment on them. With the new Facebook chat integration, you now also have one place to chat with all your friends.”
If currently use Facebook and not Messenger you can now have an always-on “people app” on your PC that gives you access and notifications as people come online in Facebook or Messenger.
Jones continued, “From a technical perspective, this is a significant task. We’re connecting Messenger’s ~300 million customers (who are already connected to Yahoo! Messenger and Office Communicator) to Facebook’s ~500 million customers. To make sure this happens smoothly while Windows Live and Facebook both build up the needed back-end infrastructure, we’ll start by releasing this chat capability in the US, UK, France, Brazil, Germany, and Russia today. We’ll continue to expand this offering to additional regions over time.”
Shout out in the comments below when you see it go live in New Zealand. Hopefully we don't have to wait too long. After all, we recently became a Tier One county.
