[JDEV] Re: Best way to drive Jabber adoption?

[GuruJ]

Justin Karneges wrote:
<snip>
> 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.

Lots of people have mentioned the 'philosophy of Jabber'.  I don't see 
that setting up a end-user-focused community that recommends the use of 
a particular client breaches this philosophy.  The philosophy, as far as 
I can make it out, appears to be solely about providing a *common 
messaging platform*, which we've begun creating.  Now we have to tell 
people *how* they can take advantage of this wonderful platform.

Let's be clear here.  I'm not suggesting that *jabber.org* makes the 
pronouncement; I'm advocating that (as Iain Shigeoka suggested) setting 
up a 'jabber.net' end-user site will help drive adoption.  Iain said:

 > 1) jabber.net - mainstream IM service (a.k.a. Jabber Open IM Service,
 > a.k.a. 'Jabber'). This is the AIM killer. It is run like a consumer IM
 > business presenting a slick, easy to use website portal into one
 > Jabber service.

Hell, maybe it shouldn't even be called 'jabber'.  But as I see it, the 
present goals objectives of the Jabber community are as follows:

1.  Raise awareness of the Jabber protocol as a technology solution for 
Instant Messaging (IM)
2.  Drive adoption of products that use the Jabber protocol, in the 
process gaining some significant market share
3.  Successfully argue the superiority of the Jabber protocol over 
SIP/SIMPLE and other competing technologies so that it becomes the 
de-facto standard IM protocol

Jabber is open & extensible, right?  So *any* adoption is good. 
Interoperability can always be added later if clients support different 
subsets of features.  A consumer 'jabber.net' isn't interested in JEPs, 
it just wants to tell people how to get connected in the simplest 
possible way.

Let's compare to two other common network tools:  IRC & Apache.

IRC: IRC has X billion clients, but if a new user was to say, "How do I 
get started using IRC?", chances are that people would say (on Windows), 
"go get mIRC".  Similarly, having a 'default' client for non-technical, 
non-power users aids adoption because they don't have to know the 
answers to *questions they don't understand*.

People are "once bitten, twice shy".  IRC, MSN are popular because they 
'just work'.  If the first Jabber client people try to use is poorly 
documented, won't work, or isn't user-friendly, they're much less likely 
to try another client to find one that works.  That in turn means we 
lose a potential Jabber client, and that person will probably spread 
negative word-of-mouth information to their friends, co-workers, etc.

The community needs to be able to provide people with a standard client 
that will "just work" with no hassles, even if it's missing some of the 
frills.  (Given the fickleness of the consumer IM market, it also needs 
to look very pretty.)

Apache:  Apache has successfully become the de-facto httpd of choice 
because it has an open, extensible architecture that is robust and does 
what people want.  There are hundreds of pages of detailed instructions 
on the web that show people how to set up many common implementations.

If Jabber is as useful as people say it is, it will become a robust 
'glue' connecting all kinds of communications systems.  To gain market 
share, the Jabber community needs to incubate *many* projects that 
develop standard ways to fulfil common, everyday communications tasks by 
using the Jabber system.

A consumer-level IM system is just one of these.  But it's an 
*important* one, both for mind-share and market-share, and it deserves 
to get its own 'niche' within the Jabber universe.

GuruJ.