I think it’s a killer idea that Facebook is launching chat for its users. This will enable users to achieve real time communication with other Facebook users directly within the application - which is a very smart move for Facebook. The use of chat has been around for more than 10 years, the first one I can remember using was ICQ, which I thought was a great application.

Of course it goes without saying that anytime you can keep the user within your own environment while adding incremental value, you grow your brand - and that’s exactly what Facebook is trying to do with this chat roll out. I think this will help grow adoption.

Another really neat feature Facebook has rolled out is thier Lexicon tool, which I think will be very helpful for advertisers to develop contextual material and learn more about the viability of ad programs BEFORE spending a lot of time rolling them out.

The Facebook site says this about the Lexicon tool:

“Lexicon is a tool to follow language trends across Facebook. Specifically, Lexicon looks at the usage of words and phrases on profile, group and event Walls. For example, you can enter “love, hate” (without quotations) to compare the usage of these two words on Facebook Walls.”

For more details on the Lexicon, click here.

With sixty nine million users, I’m sure that someone is going to figure out how to monetize this if they haven’t already. Here is some more info on Facebook’s stats compliments of Segal Media: