A few weeks ago Facebook promised to start slowly rolling out chat, and it just hit my account today. (If it's enabled for you, check it out in the lower right hand corner when you're logged into Facebook.) It reminds me of Gmail's built-in chat—it's on by default, your contacts populate your chat buddy list, and you can use it without downloading a separate client. (You can also "pop-out" the chat window to save a tab.) Facebook is much more about social networking than Gmail, which makes it ripe for chatting, but in the short time it's been in existence, Gmail chat's earned lots of loyal followers. When it comes to web-based chat, which do you prefer?

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