By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I was starting to wonder how much longer Friendfeed was going to take before they burrowed their way into my Google Talk.   But I don’t have to wonder anymore because the service has now introduced Instant Messenger integration – but only for Google Talk and Jabber users.   Which is tough luck for all you other chat network users out there!

There are several options available in the account settings :

The first one is the most useful in my opinion – Friendfeed will send you an instant message whenever someone comments on one of your posts in Friendfeed.   As ReadWriteWeb pointed out, it would be even nicer if it also notified you when someone “liked” your post, but this is still a nice start.   By notifying you of comments, you can then go in and respond.    This keeps the conversation flowing faster.

The next option is one I am not so keen on simply because it creates a LOT of noise in my Google Talk app.  Friendfeed will send you an instant message whenever someone in your circle of friends leaves a post or a comment.   I tried this for 15-20 minutes and the IM pinging was so non-stop that my work productivity ground to a halt.   In the end, I turned it off.   Ah!   Peace!

The third option will ping you whenever there is a post or comment in the site at all! Talk about information overload!    You’re also likely to go completely psychotic with rage everytime you hear Google Talk ping you with a message window by the end of the first hour.

But I like the idea of being notified of comments on my own posts and this has now been enabled on my Friendfeed account.   If you set this up yourself, Friendfeed sends a bot to your Google Talk account, which you must approve. It then just sits in your contact list.   Then when someone comments, the bot comes to life and tells you about the comment.

A very useful service for bloggers everywhere.   Do you agree?   Have you been using this recently?   What have your experiences been with it?