I have been using Adium on my Mac as my primary IM application for quite some time now and I have loved it. Once Facebook chat support was added I instantly started using that feature. However, recently my Facebook contacts stopped showing up. If someone online messages me first they pop up and I can have a conversation with them, but once they disconnect it still shows them online. I had tried updates, reinstalls, and configuration changes with no avail. Doing a quick google search I found that others had the same problem and it seems to be a bug with the Facebook Chat API. I then discovered that you can connect to Facebook chat using the Jabber protocol.

1. Add a “Jabber” account (as opposed to a Facebook account).
2. Type in your Facebook username, followed by @chat.facebook.com, for examples “JoeBob@chat.facebook.com”. You’ll need to activate your username in the account preferences (Account → Account Settings → Username) of your Facebook account, using the website.
3. Set the connection server to “chat.facebook.com”, on the options pane.
4. You are ready to go and connect! Remember to turn off your old Facebook account, or remove it.

Here a couple screen shots for your convenience. Seems to work great. Enjoy.