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Facebook Chat for Pidgin connects to the new Facebook Chat IM service without the need for an API key. Currently the plugin can log into the Facebook servers, grab the buddy list, send/receive messages, add/remove friends, receive notifications, search for Facebook friends and set your Facebook status.

There are downloads available for Windows, Mac OSX, Ubuntu .deb files and for other Linux distributions: .so file which you have to copy in Pidgin's plugins folder (see below). Download Facebook Chat for Pidgin. There are also some protocol icons for Facebook which you can download from the same location.

How to use it:

  • Download and install the plugin for your specific platform
  • Restart Pidgin (or go to Tools->Plugins) to redetect plugins
  • Add a new account to Pidgin (Accounts->Manage Accounts->Add)
  • Choose "Facebook" from the dropdown list
  • Use your Facebook email address in the username field Start chatting :)

How to install it on Linux (except Ubuntu):

Copy one of the .so files to either /usr/lib/purple-2/ (for 32-bit Linux), /usr/lib64/purple-2/ (for 64-bit Linux), /usr/lib/pidgin/ (for Nokia/Maemo) or ~/.purple/plugins/ (if you dont have root access) and restart Pidgin.

Icons:

Extract the facebook_icons.zip file to the pixmaps/pidgin/protocols folder. On Windows this is generally C:\Program Files\Pidgin\pixmaps\pidgin\protocols and on Linux, /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/protocols

>You can also grab the "Original Emoticons" theme pack that has Facebook smilies/emoticons from http://wiki.andreineculau.com/Original_Smileys_Theme_for_Pidgin

If you're having trouble with "Invalid certificate" in Pidgin, download the .pem file and add it for login.facebook.com in Tools->Certificates in Pidgin.