Facebook chat is already in use and in a deployment cycle. that leaves room to ask if previous Facebook chat and im solutions shoud just give up or if that dont even matters because they are as good as dead already?.

 What Facebook IM solutions?

Social.im

Social.im only goal was to provide the best Facebook IM client possible. such ambition was received with lot of free hype from large blogs and quite a pampering welcome by lots of Facebook users interested in speeding up the social interaction inside Facebook.

So far the client has shown to be good but nothing spectacular. there were rumors of it getting acquired to be integrated into the team working on the offical Facebook Chat.

While denied by Social.Im. the tone used to deny and some “playing dumb” innuendos could mean they did got acquired. something that should get cleared when facebook chat finally launches.

If they did not got acquired, then i must say it is pretty much game over for them, social.im never got pass Alpha, only had one focus. but that don`t means they could transform it into something else given the linage of the founders and the investors backing up social.im. same reason to believe they got acquired.

Social.im

Imo.Im

A small meebo competitor who provides a light wieight web IM client that reminds of the old Ebuddy and that now counts with a also light weight .net based desktop version.

They released a app to talk using imo.im but is pretty sure they will just scrape it and wait for a way to tap into the official chat and add support later.

The outcome for them cannot be estimated since they are two small of a competitor to have a crash and they could go any direction.

Imo.Im

Mosoto

Mosoto is another Meebo competitor with a twist, it also serves as social webtop. something that could be compared to Wixi. so they are part Wixi and part Meebo.

They do provide a Facebook IM solution but their focus is not just that and have gone for the social webtop angle. they provide a music player that can tap into box.net to serve your music. that integration also allows for file sharing and video sharing.

The product is dissapointing, it got a so-so chat experience and a so-so webtop experience. their mixed nature gets in the way and shows as the greatest fault because you cannot get a excelent expirience in either focus of the service.

The worst is that Mosoto continues to be a alpha product and web only. something that is not enough to compell anyone to exchange Meebo for Mosoto. much less because it has not properly launched.

The outcome is bleak, they should change or re-think their product.

Mosoto

Babuki

Babuki is the latest application to offer Facebook IM support but it also a full Desktop/Web(Flex)/FB8 App im client. so you can use it in 3 ways and in Mac or PC thanks to Adobe AIR. Babuki offers a Adobe AIR client that is very polished. all shows the greatest IM and Social Chat solutions, because it offers MySpace IM chat, a LiveJournal IM chat, a Facebook Chat and even supports their direct competition by offering Social.Im support. Something that should be seen as incredible.

And that is not all, they also offer two other advanced facebook Apps to complement their service and if you use Babuki, you can also send free sms to your contacts if supported.

Babuki, unlike the other services don`t goes for the “me too” route and improves over what meebo has, meebo up to this day don`t has a desktop client yet, much less one as good as the one shown by Babuki.

The outcome to Babuki should be good Facebook chat or not because of their wide offerings and thanks that they don`t depend all on Facebook.

I choose Babuki as the only compelling IM solution offering a better facebook chat than facebook own solution and one that can survive while they find a way to integrate the FB chat into Babuki.

Babuki

Those are the choices if you still don`t have Facebook chat and you find yourself impacient.

Adobe is not exactly a company known as friendly to Linux users, but now that is finally changing with the recent annoucement that they will be joining the Linux Foundation and that the only reasons they had not added Linux support for AIR until now is because they needed to wait for development to Flash core components to end first. This recent news provides a triple punch making official that Adobe will be now supporting their most widespread technologies for Linux at par with the development done in Windows and the Mac because they are now part of the Linux Foundation, that Flash for linux is now up to date compared to the other platforms and that thanks to that they will now be providing Adobe AIR 1.0 for linux along with Flex Builder for everyone to use.

While this moves may look as good spirited. I think that is only about the PR boost they expect to receive in exchange what Adobe is interested and because they knew they needed the good PR to balance things with Microsoft recent moves in this area.

Anyway, still a win for the Linux Crowd that now can go and download a Alpha version of Adobe AIR 1.0 and should finally be blessed with a better experience while handling Flash content.