I still use MSN and I guess I don't really mind, MSN has a lot of history but it's a mediocre client and Skype is much better. I used to have 100s of contacts on MSN with ~50 online at any one time, now everyone that used MSN casually uses Facebook chat so I have... 2 people online (both of which are listed as away) and anyone that uses IM seriously seems to use Skype. It was inevitable.
Does anyone here still use MSN? They say it's the most popular client, but that doesn't fit my current experience, I guess China makes up the majority of that usage? Of the people I know that still use MSN they just have it running because why not, they don't actively use it. That's how I use it.
I use it to talk to my other half whilst in the office - that is it.
I'll switch to IRSSI over SSH onto my hosted server (I'll just run a local ircd) and she can use mIRC on her laptop instead. I have no intention of using another hosted service. It would be more reliable as well - Live Messenger reliability has always been crap.
(For ref, I do not use Skype, Facebook or any social tools).
Nope, not on Facebook you can't.
Unless I'm sourly mistaken, the Facebook Jabber server does not support s2s federation (by choice, obviously) and won't let users outside the Facebook Jabber server chat to those on it.
Cue walled garden rant.
Wha you can do is use an existing Facebook (Jabber) account on a regular Jabber client such as Pidgin, Adium and such.
No problem chatting with @gmail.com JIDs from any Jabber server though (well, besides the fact that Google's Multi User Chat support is pretty shitty in my experience, and that the two-way Jabber subscription process it bit weird in Google land).
I absolutely second the Prosody advice though, wonderful server and very friendly community and devs!
This only describes the feature of connecting an XMPP client to facebook chat.
S2S federation means server-to-server. That is, use your XMPP account on your own server (such as prosody, as proposed above) to communicate with facebook users (on facebook's servers).
But that would go against fb's walled garden approach, so it's unlikely to come.
It is still very popular in western europe, aol and yahoo messenger never made any real entry here and msn took the whole cake. More and more people are moving out to skype and facebook, but I still have a big list of contacts there.
It was really popular over here (UK), but it died out fairly quickly when Facebook took over. My girlfriend is a teacher and she says that none of her students really knew what Windows Live Messenger was; kids today stick to Facebook, BBM and some use Twitter.
I actively use it to talk to my brother, 1/2 friends and for school group projects. It's super easy when I need to take a screenshot with the snipping tool and send to them. Not sure how easy that is to do in Skype (which I have but don't use).
Does anyone here still use MSN? They say it's the most popular client, but that doesn't fit my current experience, I guess China makes up the majority of that usage? Of the people I know that still use MSN they just have it running because why not, they don't actively use it. That's how I use it.