Facebook Desktop Messenger is here!

Well, almost. Although it’s available to selected few testers currently, but if you follow this link, you can get your hands on it right away! Now, as it’s clear that you can get the messenger damn easy, one question comes to mind – why one should download yet another messenger, especially when you can use web based messenger or, better, use multi-protocol Instant messengers like Pidgin? Nice question! Let’s see if we really need this messenger.

Facebook Desktop Messenger is not just a desktop messenger but it’s also a mini Facebook in itself, sans news feed of course, which makes it unique in itself. Clearly, if you’re Facebook addict, it’s a must have peice of software for you. For others, lemme go through step by step process to help you decide –

Installation of Facebook messenger is fast and easy, but it’s a web based which somewhat makes sense and it’s sole purpose is to used to access feature that requires internet connection. There is no customization feature as well, which is disheartening for tweakers.

After installation, you need to login to Facebook using your web and once logged, you get to see this message:

This essentially means, the only way to log out of the messenger is to log out from web. There is no separate logout for the app. Also, it doesn’t have any customization option whatsoever.

Once launched, you can see the messenger is split into 2 halves – news ticker and list of firends. Surprisingly and thankfully, the size of these windows is adjustable (this is the only customization you can do for this messenger).

You can see firend requests, notifications and messages as well. Image given below shows that:

One cool feature of this messenger is that it can be docked to the right of the windows, so that can always see it even if other windows are open. And also the chat window can have multiple tabs, not the first but is really a convinience!

Overall, it seems a pretty robust chat software and it’s look and feel is quite impressive. As I already said, it’s a must have software for Facebook addicts, but it’s also a very handy tool to try for others, especially if you’ve some friends on Facebook.