Facebook chat first impression

I had heard about Facebook launching a chat feature but didn't realize it was coming out already. While I've barely begun to use it, I thought I'd note down a few impressions.

The design is decently clean and having pop-up Notifications seems like a great idea (though I haven't seen it in action yet). FB copied Google Talk's simple and no-maintenance buddy list. (Though I was just thinking last night how I want more influence over the order of my contacts on Gtalk—at least a way to label people with a priority tag to sort on).

Right now I don't appreciate FB chat's omnipresence. It feels like a mini-Windows Taskbar, which compresses my already limited screen real-estate on my 12" X61. It'd be nice if I could minimize it without signing-off or popping-out the chat window. Even while minimized, I feel like it sticks out too much. It'd be nice to have it in a fixed place that doesn't interrupt the flow of the page while offline.

By nature, chatting is far more intrusive than emails or wall posts (expectations of immediate vs delayed response times), and I'd like to have control over which of my FB contacts can IM me. This could be a big issue considering the small marginal benefits of having access to certain people you might not already have on your other IM programs compared to the downsides. An invisibility or block feature would solve this.

I also wonder how this will play out with my classmates. It could be greatly beneficial since I still don't have the emails/screennames/phone #s of all the classmates I talk to regularly.

Perhaps there would also be the unintended benefit of having someone monitor how much time you spend on FB—"Stop wasting time on Facebook and send me your part of the assignment!"