First of all, before some of you freak out, let me tell you that XMPP is a protocol used for chatting developed by Jabber. It powers many Chat clients and is used by Google Talk too.

This just in that facebook is trying to build a XMPP interface so that you will be able to use facebook chat on clients like iChat, Kopete, Empathy and Pidgin. What’s more, you will be able to look at the status of your friends and can view the photos shared by them. This will bring facebook chat out of the facebook for more than 300 million facebook users.

It is worth noting that clients like Digsby and Meebo already offer integrated facebook chat.