Inside Facebook

A few weeks ago, Facebook asked Meebo to turn off its “unofficial” integration with Facebook Chat until Facebook’s secure chat APIs were finalized. Today, Meebo announced that the company is launching the first official alpha version of Facebook Connect + Chat integration.

Now, Facebook users are able to login to Facebook Chat via Facebook Connect on Meebo.com. After authenticating through the standard Facebook Connect flow, users must approve a second “extended access” request in order to allow Meebo to access Facebook Chat on your behalf.

After logging in, your Facebook friends appear normally in your Meebo buddy list, and you can easily chat with Facebook friends.

Other downloadable IM clients have launched Facebook Chat integration in the past, including Digsby, Adium, and Social.IM. However, those services continue to operate today, presumably because they pose less security risk. One would imagine Facebook will probably ask all clients connecting to Facebook Chat to convert to the secure Facebook Connect Chat APIs as they are finalized.