Facebook chat is locking you in

Twitter still has an API though your client cannot become "popular" and Google+ has an API for business use as well as an unofficial API. It wouldn't surprise me if Facebook chat ends up with an "unofficial API" too. It's too bad platforms for chat have never been as open or standardized as email, but maybe WebRTC or some other standard way of implementing plugin-less clients will assist us in future. For now, shipping proprietary JSON to the browser is too easy to pass up, and obscurity has been a great way to prevent lazy spammers. ;-)

I can still add Google as a regular Jabber service in the programs I use. Is that also scheduled for deprecation soon?

I am disappointed about Facebook. Not a big fan of the service, but I maintain an account on XMPP so Facebook people can get in touch, and now I will just have to tell people to stop using it to contact me. Maybe that's for the better anyway. Seems like a minimal effort required to maintain compatibility for people who don't use their software, but I guess they decided they're popular enough that they don't need those users.