Idle Chatter

If you are a heavy conversationalist on Facebook, there is a new desktop based alternative to the standard Facebook chat application called Chit Chat. This app is designed specifically for chatting with your Facebook friends and offers a user friendly and intuitive interface. After downloading and installing the software all you have to do is log in using your Facebook username and password. You can then import whatever contacts you want from Facebook. Although you log in using your Facebook credentials, Chit Chat runs independently of Facebook, so you are not actually logged into the site. This allows you to chat with your contacts without viewing everyone's status updates, etc.

Chit Chat resembles older versions of MSN Live Messenger so anyone with previous experience with that or any other instant messenger should be able to use this with no problem. The interface is pretty simple and can't be customized design-wise, but offers a good selections of features for chat.

Contacts are shown as either offline or online and the user can categorize them as they choose. The chat window is presented as floating tabs which represent the conversations that are open at the present time. You can type text which you can format simply (bold, italics) and insert emoticons. You can also save and log conversations.

Basically all Chit Chat is is a slightly more sophisticated version of Facebook Chat. If you're used to an IM with all the trimmings this probably isn't for you. However if all you want is a more convienient way to Facebook chat this does the job.