LiveJournal has just announced integration with Jabber, the open IM protocol. This means you can log in to Jabber-based IM clients using your LiveJournal username and password, and livejournal.com as the server. iChat, Gaim, Trillian Pro and Adium X are currently supported.

The Jabber client is sychronized with your LJ friends list - adding a friend on Livejournal will automatically add them to your Jabber buddy list (just like Tagworld Chat). The integration also works the other way: if you add a buddy who's also a LiveJournal user, you'll have the option to add them to your friends list next time you log in. Additionally, you'll soon be able to post from Jabber to your LiveJournal blog using a chat bot. But be warned that this is a very early release: when you connect, you'll see the message, "LJ Talk is currently a pre-alpha service lacking tons of features and probably with a bunch of bugs. We're actively developing it, constantly restarting it with new stuff."

LiveJournal, which is essentially Friendster crossed with blogging, is one of the web's biggest communities. The site currently has 10.6 million users - 1.2 million of those have made updates in the last 30 days. The majority of users are aged 15-23, and most are female. This is an enormous user base that might not be familiar with Jabber - this move could be a big boon to the project.

[via Niall Kennedy, more at the LJ dev blog]