Facebook Releases Messenger Client for Windows 7

After the beta leaked late Thursday, Facebook officially released the Messenger for Windows desktop client mere hours later.

Facebook junkies rejoice! You now have a Windows 7-based desktop client version of Facebook Messenger that allows you to chat live with your long-lost high school buddies, college roommates, business associates and co-workers who shouldn't be spending company time on Facebook to begin with. It also keeps track of the Ticker feed, letting you know in real-time what everyone is sharing, liking and befriending without the need to load up a browser.

The official release arrives just hours after a leaked version of the Facebook Messenger for Windows beta appeared. There’s speculation that Menlo Park decided to officially release the client rather than combat the leak itself. While that may or not be true, the current Windows client arrives without a version number, so there's no clue as to where it is in the developmental stage. It will, however, update itself when needed.

According to the Facebook Help Center, the new client does not allow for video calling -- at least, not yet. "Chatting with multiple friends, video calling, limiting chat availability and editing settings are not currently available through the app," the FAQ reads. "You can still do these by going to www.facebook.com in your web browser."

After installation, users must log in by hitting the blue Log In button. This action will bring up a web browser, loading Facebook in the process. Once signed on, users can then close the browser window and chat away on Facebook through the Windows client. The catch is that users will stay logged into Facebook until they manually log out of the client. This done by right-clicking on the icon next to the system clock and selecting "Log Out."

The client itself is rather basic, housing the list of friends online and offline as seen on Facebook, the timeline ticker mounted just above that, and the typical Facebook toolbar at the top sporting your latest profile picture along with icons for friend requests, personal messages and notifications. At the bottom is a search bar and an icon for locking and unlocking the desktop client to the right side of the screen.

ZDNet reports that Facebook began testing the Messenger for Windows client with a limited group of users last month. Unfortunately, it looks as if the client is only available for Windows 7 at this time, but Facebook has already unleashed clients for Android, iOS and BlackBerry. So far there's no indication that Facebook will even develop a version for older releases of Windows although clients for Mac and Linux may appear if the Windows version proves successful.

The official Messenger for Windows download link is available from fbcdn_dragon-a.akamaihd.net.