Filed under: World wide web, Web services, Browser Tips, Social Software, web 2.0

Facebook has finally rolled out its new chat feature to all users. That means you can chat with anyone on your Facebook contact list if the two of you are logged into the Facebook web page at the same time. But what if you like the idea of chatting with your Facebook friends, but hate the idea of keeping Facebook open in a browser tab all day?

Mozilla Links discovered a nifty trick for adding Facebook chat to your browser sidebar in Firefox. All you have to do is click on your bookmark toolbar and create a new bookmark. Give it whatever name you like, and enter this for the URL:

http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php

Make sure to select the button that states “Load this bookmark in the sidebar” and you should be all set.

Note that you can drag the sidebar divider to make the Facebook Chat window more massive or smaller. If all you want to do is see your contact list, the sidebar doesn’t take up much space as all. But if you want to actually open a chat window with one or more of your contacts, you’ll need to widen the sidebar a bit, which will cost you some valuable web browser real estate.

Facebook Chat isn’t the only instant messenger you can open in a Firefox sidebar. You can also create bookmarks for Google Speak and Meebo.

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Filed under: Management, Raising money, Engagements

We’ve been digging around for the the coming layoffs at private equity firms to get a good handle on just what the economic downturn and credit crunch will mean to all the B-School children who wanted to be the next multi-millionaires and billionaires. While no hard numbers are out industry-wide yet (at least that you can hang your hat on), there are actually some things trickling out.

The Deal Journal, of the Wall Street Journal, noted in a post this day that American Capital Strategies (NASDAQ: ACAS) plans to let go an unspecified number of staffers in middle-markets. As you can see in the chart below, they’ve had their fair share of pain in the process.

Dan Primack, of Private Equity Hub, also wrote a piece noting that no one is getting hired in finance anymore, so he linked to an M&A article noting “how to get fired.”

Even Zac Bissonnette, wrote here on BloggingBuyouts at the end of February about how M&A was down so much that dealmakers were set for large layoffs.

Here we are at the end of April and no major firings have come the way of dealmakers. Since they can’t all jump into “distressed mortgages and loans” and since they can’t all go to work for a SPAC immediately, it seems only a matter of time and that time is sooner rather than later.

The one thing you can bet on is that there won’t be press releases out of private equity firms. They are private for a reason, well most are still private. When the news does come out it’s probably safe to assume that the firms will say this is merely a reflection of the current conditions or something of the like. Just keep in mind that companies don’t fire waves or groups of workers if they think they will be needed in a few months time.

Who knows, maybe they will just announce worker furloughs through the end of summer.

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