Comment by seba_dos1
6 days ago
Facebook never had "first-class integration". It was just a client bridge - you could login into Facebook Chat using your XMPP client, but it was a completely separate network, unlike Google Talk which was an actual federating XMPP server.
Fair enough. (Although all the XMPP clients that I used supported multiple accounts, so it made little difference from where I was standing.)
In any case, it contributed significantly to XMPP's reach and utility, and it's gone now.
(And my point regarding support on Google/Facebook was that their users could chat with me over XMPP without having to leave their familiar sites, sign up for anything new, or do anything else special. That put it in easy reach of the masses.)
The same could be said about various XMPP transports that I've used back in the day with Google Talk to access all sorts of IM networks. Facebook was just running one on their servers rather than you running it on yours.
Ultimately they just briefly used XMPP to not have to implement their own desktop client for their closed proprietary network. It had nothing to do with network reach, unlike Google Talk which did actually bring XMPP to the masses for a while (and then took it away).