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Babuki is a new Facebook app that somehow thinks it has a chance at stealing the lead from Facebook’s IM client which is coming out this week – how? We’re not sure. Fortunately, TechCruch is –

Aly Chesney, an Oxford University dropout who has worked on Babuki with a few of his peers, points out two main advantages to his product: it can be used both through the Facebook website itself and through an AIR-based desktop client. And it works with other IM services such as AIM, Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, MySpace, Livejournal, and even Social.IM.

Babuki also provides other useful features such as the ability to make yourself invisible to certain Facebook friends and to set a wider range of status messages (Away, Extended Away, Busy, etc.)

The interoperability Babuki provides with other IM services is certainly the main advantage it has over Facebook Chat, which will eschew the Jabber (XMPP) protocol in favor of a proprietary one. The Mac and PC compatible desktop client also gets a big thumbs up from me.

See more at TechCrunch.

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