Now you can Facebook Chat through iChat

John Brownlee ()

Now you can Facebook Chat through iChat

Facebook Chat is a wonderful little service opening you up to the incessant, sub-literate, real-time blatherings of the wide array of superficial acquaintances you’ve coalesced over the many years: the dim-witted teenage cousins, the sociopathic ex-boyfriends, the senile but sweet grannies, the LOLing old high school friends.

Or at least that’s what it is like for me, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve already turned Facebook Chat off. It wouldn’t surprise me, though, to find out you’ve got a more articulate gaggle of Facebook friends. So good news! Facebook has just posted instructions on how to access Facebook Chat through iChat, even when you’re not signed in to Facebook proper.

The set-up is pretty easy. All you do is go to the iChat’s “Preferences”, menu, click “Accounts” add a new account, select “Jabber” from the pull-down menu and then type in your screen name ((sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)) and password. You then edit your “Server Options” to point to chat.facebook.com at port 5222, unticking SSL as you go. Click OK and you’re all set to harass and be harassed by Facebook friends through iChat at any time. You’ll be being brow-beaten for never responding to their chats in no time.

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[via 9to5Mac]

15 comments »

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in News, Software |

  • Charli

    in some ways I wish ichat would go the way of trillian and such. let me have the power to AIM, twitter, facebook, Gtalk, icq all in one. even one buddy list where i can seemlessly talk to folks no matter what they are logged into. ichat takes care of that for me.
    and put it on the ipad with support for me to attach an external webcam if I want to go video

  • http://hiphopandbreakz.blogspot.com/ scott

    I’d rather use Adium

  • Daniel

    I’d rather have the ability to do audio and video chat.

  • sbi

    The same instructions work for Adium (i am using 1.4b8). I didn’t even change any server options/ssl. The users show up with a weird number instead of username, but user pictures are there, and hovering over the number shows the actual name.

  • Tommy

    I can’t make it work!! What do I use as Account name?

  • http://tvscifi.com steven Hopstaken

    I can’t make this work with my account name either. Should it be email address?

  • Joel

    This worked like a charm! Thanks! :)

  • Namhar

    you guys need to find your username or create one if you dont have it from this link http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/chat.php

  • Kai Humphries

    Same here, I cant get it to work :(

  • http://bit.ly/bYGmyK Clarita Lute

    Facebook is the best social network but the user profile is incredibly dull. I spruce it up by using Chameleon Tom it helps make your profile go with your character.

  • http://www.layouts-for-facebook.info/ layouts for facebook

    Great post ! Thanks !

  • http://security-wire.com/05/how-to-remove-trojan-bnk-win32-keylogger-gen-virus.html Trojan-bnk.win32.keylogger.gen

    It’s really cool!

  • moller96

    What is my User name for facebook?

  • http://www.facebook.com/GJJFAN Ian James

    Havin trouble gettin this to work. Followed the instructions. But I am obviously missing something..

  • monkeyape456

    Not working for me either. It keeps asking for my password. Anybody know why?