Facebook chat coming soon, privacy controls launch today

Facebook is adding new privacy controls today which will give you more control over your interactions with people in your friend lists. For example, you can share photo albums or applications with your professional contacts while hiding away the good stuff for closer friends.

The company also confirmed plans to launch a web-based instant messenger service that will let you communicate with other Facebook members in real-time. TechCrunch has the video you can see above showing how Facebook Chat could work. But the application is still in development and there could be some changes before it's officially launched in a few weeks.

As IM clients go, Facebook Chat doesn't look that impressive. You'll only be able to communicate with other Facebook users, not AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger users. But Jabber support could be added in the future, which would let you access Facebook Chat with third party software like Trillian, Pidgin, or Adium.

Tags: adium, chat, facebook, facebook-chat, pidgin, trillian