Facebook Finally Releasing IM Service

It is really unbelievable that Facebook hasn’t launched an Instant Messaging service until now. There is also great potential for their service to have a major impact on other IM services. Facebook has become very popular and if they turn their messaging service into something that can be used like AOL IM or even combine SMS features they could be a force to be reckoned with.

The launch that is expected within maybe a week will just be an IM service allowing users to chat in real-time with their friends. There is no functionality with Jabber as previously suggested and there is no announcement of a software application to go with it. Although, you have to believe that Facebook has many ideas about how they will plan to expand the service after it’s initial release. It will also be interesting to see if and how application developers can make use of the new service. I can just see real-time Pirates vs. Ninja battles in the near future. Hopefully there will actually be far more useful applications developed that utilize the IM service though.

The IM service will definitely be an excellent add-on for an already great social networking application portal. It will certainly be used by their users but will likely not replace other familiar IM apps such as AOL Instant Messenger. I am also very interested to see how they try to incorporate advertising with the new service. Zuckerberg claims they don’t think about that when creating new services most of the time but I am sure he is under a lot of pressure to come up with something that will finally bring the company to profitability.