Three months after the beta testing period went live, Facebook Messenger for Windows has now entered officialdom, giving IT staff across the land another program that they need to blacklist from their employees' workstations.

"Millions of people log into Facebook every day to keep up with friends," said Jack O'Connor, software engineer on the Messenger team. "They also browse other websites and run computer programs, so it’s easy to miss important stuff. Maybe a cousin just posted about getting a new job, or a best friend wants to chat about dinner plans for tonight.

"You should be able to stay in touch anytime, no matter what you’re doing. So today we’re introducing Messenger, a new app that brings Facebook to your desktop."

Facebook Messenger ties in with the Message side of your Facebook persona, so will bring in all your Facebook conversations no matter where they took place and it also offers additional features such as friend request notifications and timeline updates. There's also a nice docking feature so it sits locked on the right-hand side of your open Windows.

Similar platforms were launched last year for both Android and iOS devices and we're told that a Mac OS X version will be landing soon.

Pocket-lint has taken it for a quick spin and found it somewhat buggy so far. We were not showing as available despite being able to see our online pals and we couldn't send instant messages to people chatting via the Facebook website rather than the app.

You can download the new software free, at facebook.com/about/messenger - see if you have better luck than us.