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Chat Heads

I sort of despise Facebook. I am not sure exactly what it is. Sure the privacy issues irk me. The format of the website has most recently been more annoying than innovative. The mobile application has been barely functional on both iOS and Android. While those things bother me, I am not sure exactly what it is that makes me want to flee it. It is probably a bunch of little things like those listed above.

There are some likes I have within the world of Facebook. All of them are entities that also exist outside of Facebook. That is to say, I like the users that I am connected with on Facebook. In fact that is what keeps me and, as far I can tell from the chatter among the internet, most everyone else there too.

I do have to confess though, that I am liking one of their recent products. Chat Heads is a new feature for Facebook's messaging platform on Android devices (and in a very limited fashion on iOS devices). It came out with a more prominent product that I never see myself using called Facebook Home. But you can get Chat Heads without using the whole launcher by simply having the Messages app installed.

What I like about Chat Heads is the ability to have a text conversation without leaving what I am doing. Although Chris calls this the ADHD function of Facebook, I would like to see other messaging products come up with their own versions of this. It would be handy to see some text messaging apps such as Google Voice as well as even Gmail's mobile app use something similar. With Gmail, perhaps one could set a certain group of contacts that would show up as a chat head, or whatever alternative nomenclature Gmail might use.

So to conclude. I am still not being brought back to Facebook by this feature. I suppose it may increase my usage of the Facebook Messaging platform temporarily. But I would like to see this type of feature become standard across the board for other messaging platforms.

Have you used Chat Heads? If so, do you find it useful or annoying?
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