A lesson in optionality

[jducoeur]

[Side-note: I haven't been posting much. Sorry: work's been eating my brain, and I don't want to bore people with a complete excess of CommYou stuff.]

Facebook's latest feature is built-in chat: when you're in FB, there is simply chat *there*. It's not something you turn on -- it just sits at the bottom of your window. And you Can't Turn It Off. (Far as I can tell.)

Which wouldn't be so bad, except that it's taking up about 60% of my CPU, far as I can tell. I was initially worried that something in CommYou was running out of control, but no -- it's just as bad on the Facebook homepage. And since Chat is their new feature, I rather suspect it's the culprit.

Moral of the story: features that the user can't turn off are *bad*; cute features that they can't turn off are worse. A lesson for me to remember in CommYou...

Comments

[laurion]

Huh. I'm not seeing any problems. I actually like the way they've implemented it; comparatively unobtrusive, and the notifications popup down there is also in the category of useful to me. I play Chess and Scrabulous, and it alerts me to when it is my turn. Unlike many web based chat systems, it eats a minimal amount of real estate when not actively engaged.

I agree that turning it off should be an option though.

Amusingly, Digsby (whih I can no longer use) has _already_ incorporated FB Chat.

[jducoeur]

Yes, and I'm rather curious about how they did that -- far as I know, FB Chat isn't an open protocol. I can only assume that they reverse-engineered the traffic, and are poking into it. (Which, to be fair, is what Convoq did for *all* of the protocols, so I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised.)

I'm quite intrigued, actually. IM/Chat integration is in the cards for CommYou in the moderately near future, and I'm starting to wonder if there is useful synergy to be mined with Digsby.

Why can't you use it any more?

[laurion]

Doesn't run under my new Ubuntu install. At least, not until they release their intended linux version.