While Facebook announced in May of last year that they would be launching XMPP support for Facebook Chat, the launch hasn’t taken place yet. There have been a few services, including Meebo, that have been working with Facebook to test out external support of Facebook’s chat service however XMPP support is still not live. That may all change shortly according to process one who suggested earlier today that the launch of Facebook’s chat XMPP connection interface is imminent.



So what the hell is XMPP? If you aren’t a developer you probably have no idea. Ultimately XMPP is a messaging protocol based on XML. It’s simply a standard which enables two parties to relay chat messages between each other. XMPP has given rise to a surge in third-party chat software like Adium, Digsby, and many others. While not all chat providers (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, etc) provide support for XMPP, it is quickly becoming the most widely used standard.

If you aren’t into geeking out about communications protocols, all you need to know is this: Facebook chat could soon be availab