As expected, Facebook announced that they will be launching Facebook Chat this week. The announcement, made via a post on The Facebook Blog, says that the rollout will be slow, but, unlike MySpaceIM, there won't be anything for you to install when it arrives in your profile - you'll just have a new "Chat Bar" at the bottom of your browser. On the one hand, Facebook needed to launch chat in order to compete with the News Corp giant, but on the other, we have to wonder, do we need another IM?

Facebook IM takes a page out of Gmail's GTalk, mimicking the way that browser-based IM functions - it even offers a way to pop-out your conversation window, so you can continue browsing Facebook without losing track of your chat session.

In addition to the pop-out feature, Facebook chat, like any IM program, lets you appear "offline" if you don't want to chat. The conversations are private,…