Meebo is a cool little web application. They allow users of AIM, MSN, and other clients to talk with friends on the web. But when they added Facebook Chat to their list, Facebook got a little antsy.

Facebook stabs Meebo…

This Web 2.0 drama all began when Meebo added the Facebook Chat service to their website. It allowed users to use Facebook Chat (alongside AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, and other clients) on Meebo’s website. Sounds like a good idea, right? It wasn’t according to Facebook. Facebook, after a recent issue with Power.com, threatened to take similar actions on Meebo if they did not remove Facebook Chat from their list of clients.

Meebo is a web application that allows you to use popular IM clients.

…And then makes up with them

Meebo quickly removed Facebook Chat. They aren’t a huge company, so it was obviously a scare when they had Facebook on their back. I don’t know when it was communicated that they needed to use Facebook Connect, but it appeared in the message posted on Meebo.com a couple of hours after Facebook Chat was removed from their list of services. The message reads:

Hi Meebo,

Got some bad news. :(

As a bunch of you already know (because you’ve been using it), we recently added Facebook Chat into Meebo.

We have been speaking to the Facebook team, and it turns out, they’d like us to connect to their network in a different way. In the interim, they asked us take Facebook off Meebo, and we said ‘okay.’

However, we were glad to hear that the Facebook team was genuinely excited to see their network on Meebo, especially since they already have plans to open Facebook Chat. They also committed resources from their Chat and Facebook Connect teams to do extra work with us to get Facebook Chat back on Meebo ‘really, really soon.’

Work began this week, so stay tuned. We expect some all nighters on both sides!

Seth

P.S. Meebo grew in December. We reached close to 45 million people, a new record, including 2.5 million via Meebo Community IM. So it’s not all bad news… :) (source)

In the end, Facebook allowed Meebo to use Facebook Chat. So why did they make them remove it in the first place? Apparently Meebo’s method of connecting was not up to Facebook’s standards. They required Meebo to use ‘Facebook Connect’, Facebook’s new OpenID-esque application. I’ll talk more about Facebook Connect in a future post. The moral of the story is: Is Facebook playing nice with other websites? The answer is yes and no. They say ‘You can use different features of Facebook on your website’, but then later say ‘if you don’t connect with Facebook Connect, you will want to hire a lawyer’. Is this the way that they should be approaching it? This is completely different from OpenIDs approach. But, then again, Facebook and OpenID are two completely different services.

Tags: Facebook, Facebook Chat, Facebook Connect, Meebo, Power.com