As you probably know, Facebook rolled out its own chat application earlier this year, allowing users to send instant messages to each other when logged on. Adding chat was a no-brainer for Facebook – even if only a small subset of users log-on regularly, it adds millions of minutes in overall time that their massive community is spending on the site.

Hoping to create a similar effect for niche communities, white label provider ConVerdge has hooked up with Userplane to integrate chat into their customer’s social networking sites. The look and feel is very similar to Facebook chat. Login and you see a minibar at the bottom of your browser window, alerting you to how many of your friends are signed online, notifications (friend requests, comments, etc.), and the option to update your status.

Once you send someone a message, the experience is a bit more full-featured than what Facebook currently offers. Beyond simple text messaging, there’s video chat, VoIP calling, and games, for example. These are standard features in Userplane’s Webchat2 and Webmessenger2 products, but with the ConVerdge partnership, are now integrated with your existing userbase so members can use the same usernames and passwords.

If you want to check the features out for yourself, you don’t have to look far: we’ve actually integrated them here on our My Mashable social network, making us the first site to use the new tools. The partnership between ConVerdge (disclosure: a Mashable business partner) and Userplane (an AOL company) will be officially announced tomorrow.

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