subject: The Significance Of Facebook In In Communicating With Other People [print this page] There are a number of chat platforms available on the Internet today; they've been competing with each other for years. Yahoo, Google, MSN, and Skype have all made their bid for supreme chat champion, but it looks like an unlikely contender is starting to beat out the others: Facebook.
It was a very intelligent marketing decision for Facebook to incorporate chat into their website. Facebook has become extremely popular for a number of reasons. Here are a few.
Since Facebook has such a wide and established user base, odds are most of your friends have one. This makes everyone readily accessible; if you and your friends use Facebook, you can chat with them.
While some people prefer Skype over AIM, both groups probably have Facebook pages. So that means you won't have to pick one or the other. Obtaining people's e-mail addresses and finding out which service they use gets thrown out completely.
Facebook's large clientele is probably what makes it such a threat to other chat service providers, and probably explains its speedy rise to the top.
Another thing that makes Facebook chat so great is the fact that people usually stay on Facebook for hours at a time. If you use your e-mail to chat, odds are you are only on it when you're checking your e-mail; it doesn't make you very available.
Facebook, however, can stay open in the background while you work at the office. You can switch between doing your work and checking your Facebook, which makes you much more accessible to your friends.
Finally, Facebook is not hard to use. There is no complicated interface to learn or a bunch of extra upgrades to apply. This makes Facebook chat appealing to a wide variety of social circles, from the computer geeks to people who are just starting out.
