How to Connect and Sync Facebook with AIM

It appears there are those who don’t know how to chat with Facebook friends on AIM. Yes despite how there’s a huge banner that asks if you want to use Facebook Connect. Well maybe you closed it out or you really don’t understand the process, so here’s how you do it very quickly.

Choose your version of AIM

You need to download or use a specific version of AIM to start this process. You have only three choices:

• Aim for Windows 7.2 Beta
• Aim for Mac 2.1 Beta
• Aim Express

These are the only three versions that include the new Facebook chat feature. While you are installing AIM, you can set up your Facebook account by going to the Aim Lifestream website.

Adding Facebook to AIM Lifestream

f Connect allows third party websites like AOL to sign into Facebook

Head over to AIM Lifestream:

• Enter your AIM login details.
• Click on Settings in the top right corner.
• Click ADD near the Facebook Icon.
• Click fConnect.
• Enter your FACEBOOK login details.

Once you complete the process, your AIM screen name will be synced to your Facebook account. This synchronization will appear on all beta versions of AIM that support this feature. So you do not need to repeat these steps for each client. You can also add as many screen names as you want to the same Facebook account!

Within your buddy list check for the Facebook icon and full names of your friends on the buddy list.

Facebook Status Update Through AIM

Click that little Facebook Icon

To send a status update through AIM, you must activate the Facebook icon within the status update box. If you hover over the Facebook Icon it will say “Also update your status on Facebook (updating is OFF/ON).” If it’s turned on,  it will first show up in your AIM Lifestream, and might take a while before it shows up in your actual Facebook profile. 

If you click that little +photos icon at the top right corner you can also add post images to your Facebook Status. Pretty neat!

Facebook And AIM Problems

A sample of issues that affect AIM 7.2. Pay particular attention to the ones highlighted in purple, as your very likely to hit these problems through daily use.

• There can be a delay in seeing your Facebook friends go online, offline or idle.
• If you have a very large number of Facebook friends it can take a minute to load your AIM Buddy List, and you will not be able to IM until the Buddy List is loaded.
• Messages sent to an offline Facebook buddy will not be delivered when they come online.
• When you login to AIM as invisible, you will see a non-working “Sign In to Facebook Chat” prompt under your Facebook groups on the Buddy List, and in the Buddy List menu.
• An empty Facebook Friends group will appear on clients that are not Facebook enabled/capable
• If you are using IM forwarding to send IMs to your mobile device, you will receive, but not be able to reply, to messages from Facebook friends.
• Occasionally the association between AIM and Facebook account is lost with no visible user notification
•  IMing Facebook friends while your AIM privacy is set to ‘Allow only users on my Buddy List’ causes IMs to be bounced back.
• Your Facebook friends’ status message from Facebook will not be shown in the AIM buddy list, next to their name.

Just like Bebo Friends, the “Facebook Friends“ buddy list group will get added to your buddy list and will stay permanently until you remove yourself from Facebook Connect.

Currently there may be a bug where your Facebook Friends group shows zero Friends online even though they are supposed to be on. As this bug is currently being researched the suggestions would be to ensure “online presence” is checked on the Facebook Privacy page. Also check that your buddy list privacy settings are not set to allow only users on my buddy list.

Facebook Application Settings

Also check for the following:

• On Facebook.com, Click Account
• Click Application Settings
• Click Edit Settings Under AIM
• Ensure “Log into Facebook Chat on my behalf” is checkmarked.

As the settings on this page are straightforward, having one of them unchecked means that feature would not work within AIM. Is Publish to Streams unchecked? Well you wouldn’t be able to update your facebook status through AIM would you?