[JDEV] Best way to drive Jabber adoption?

[Justin Karneges]

On Friday 13 June 2003 07:04 pm, Rachel Blackman wrote:
> No, it won't be; I dispute that people are going to 'make the right choice'
> based on those lists, any more than the existing jabber.org client list has
> particularly spurred widespread adoption.

Right, the general public does not want to worry about details.  They just 
want to be up and running with minimal fuss.  A similar detail is the choice 
of a server.  They should not be burdened by this.

Yes, this totally goes against the "philosophy of Jabber", but I think it is 
worth pursuing in order to drive adoption by typical end-users.  We've 
already got the developer, tech crowd, and standards groups covered.  I see 
no problem in exploring other paths at the same time.

> relatively straightforward to use.  They also want the glitzy features...
> after all, if they can voice-chat from their legacy system, why should they
> change to Jabber if it doesn't support it?

I totally agree here.  I tend to recommend Jabber only to those that have 
minimal expectations of an IM service.  There is still a lot to go..   we 
need the server side privacy lists, the new file transfer and avatar efforts 
to finish, a nice voice chat standard, etc.  To many of us here, these 
features may seem extraneous, but to many general users they are simply par.

> And even the more savvy folks find themselves stuck with legacy systems
> because the less-savvy folks don't change off it.  I have maybe 20 MSN
> contacts, most of whom are family; I'll never be able to dump MSN unless I
> can steer them off of it as well.

Which is effectively impossible.  I was fortunate enough to have a family that 
didn't use IM at all, so I gave them Jabber and they are happy.  New users 
are easy.  Converting existing users is painful.

> But a single client which deliberately obscures much of the complexity of
> Jabber from people, which provides the AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo transports
> as transparently as possible to get people over to Jabber, which has a
> look-and-feel that makes people feel comfortable with it, and which has a
> single place where people can go to find help on it... that would have
> value in getting folks onto Jabber, too.

Only one client appears to have this direction: Rhymbox.  However, we still 
need that "single place where people can go" to back it up.  We need a 
reliable free server devoted to end-users, with an easy client that uses that 
server by default.

And yes, powering this service would cost money, and I don't really have a 
solution for that.  The other way to get the masses using Jabber is for AOL 
and MSN to embrace it on their server, but somehow I think finding a sponsor 
for our own user-centric Jabber service would be more realistic.

> There are other ways, of course.  Lord knows we have enough Trillian users
> in our installed userbase, and I'm hoping that adding Jabber into our
> package will at least get some of the Trillian users onto Jabber as well.

The mass userbase of Trillian cannot be ignored, and I think the inclusion of 
Jabber is critical.  In my personal experience, more folks know about your IM 
client than Jabber!  This is either a sad state of affairs or a unique 
opportunity.  Do us well. ;-)

-Justin