In the vast world of communication, instant messaging is a long-standing medium. Facebook has entered the scene relatively recently, as has Twitter. If you use these newer mediums of communication and you're a Pidgin user then you may want to look at the Pidgin plugins for accessing them.

Pidgin is an an Instant Messaging client that has plugins and capabilities to connect to you to all of your favorite messaging protocols (MSN, Yahoo!, AOL, ICQ, Google Talk, etc..), and in addition there are third-party plugins for Facebook and Twitter. The integration is magnificent, I was like a kid on Christmas morning when I found this out and started using it.

You can find the Twitter plugin here.

The Facebook plugin can be found here.

Look for the "install" link on the right hand side of the page and follow the instructions, in no time you'll be using Pidgin to do two more IM functions.

Find more Pidgin plugins on the third party plugin page.