Facebook has just announced that third-party instant messengers will now easily be able to integrate Facebook Chat, which now operates under Jabber (XMPP) technology. Since many of the most popular messaging clients--iChat, Pidgin, Adium, Miranda--offer Jabber support, it's likely that you'll be able to now chat to your Facebook friends via your favorite client.

An added bonus for users who take advantage of friend lists is that those lists can also be made visible in other applications.

Facebook Connect also has received full Facebook Chat support so that developers can bring the chat experience to their own third-party Web sites or applications.

In essence, Facebook wants Facebook Chat to be ubiquitous. And since the social networking site is home to 400 million users worldwide who are sending more than two billion messages via Facebook Chat per day, that aim is not very far-fetched: third-party developers have only users to gain by embracing Facebook Chat.

It's worth noting that some products, like Nimbuzz, had already managed to integrate Facebook Chat. Today's changes, however, will just make it that much easier for developers to add Facebook Chat support to their clients.