Facebook Messenger for Windows officially out

Facebook as a social networking service enjoys a very healthy lead over its competition - Google+ and Twitter. Now, here are those who’ve given up on Google Talk and other messaging utilities and have opted to use Facebook as a way to communicate with family and friends. The Facebook Messenger for mobile devices has been around for a long time now, but there’s a Windows version of the messenger that has been in development for a while. Initially, there were rumours and then, there was an early development build released to the public. Now however, a final release is ready and it’s available for download. If you want to try it out, you can head over to the Facebook Messenger page.

Final release is out for download

The messenger app is easy to use and sits in the system tray and lists all of your friends. It’s design to let you chat with your friends without having to open up your browser and login to your Facebook account. Chat messages from your friends immediately pop up on screen and updates, notifications from your friends are also shown in the program. Facebook says that the program is compatible with Windows 7 as of now and that they’re working on a Windows Vista version. There isn’t any Windows XP support as of now, so if you’re still using it, it’s time to upgrade. Also, there isn’t support for group chat or the option to have video conferences with others.

Some of the other features, include the ability to dock the window to sides of the Windows desktop. It appears every major social networking site wants to have some presence on all major platforms - desktops and mobiles. For example, Twitter had bought over Tweetdeck for a large sum and they have both mobile and desktop applications, some by themselves and some made by Tweetdeck. Facebook has made the move and launched mobile apps as well as iPad apps. Google, too has made mobile apps that allow users to chat and quickly access streams on the Android platform.