[JDEV] Best way to drive Jabber adoption?

[Timothy Carpenter]

On 14/6/03 8:41 pm, "Tijl Houtbeckers" <thoutbeckers at splendo.com> wrote:

> Rachel Blackman <rcb at ceruleanstudios.com> wrote on 14-6-2003 20:03:04:
>> 
>>> Are you looking for way of making a better user experience?
>>> Different users want different things, and I still don't see how
>>> Jabber can tempt users away from all-in-one chat programs like Fire
>>> or Trillian without putting in several times as many developer-hours
>>> of work.  That's not to say that those clients are better, only that
>>> they're better suited to some people's needs.
>> 
>> This is the key point, right here.  Jabber's transports have a very
>> good, beneficial feature for people who don't need more than basic
>> messaging; the ability to store your legacy IM userlists and account
>> info on the server, so that you only ever need to provide your jabber
>> login and voila, you're on everything.
>> 
>> This is countered by the fact that the average IM user, who you want to
>> spur to adopt Jabber, does not care about that as much.  Your average
>> IM user is probably using the system from one computer; my dad only
>> ever logs onto MSN Messenger from his own computer, so he wouldn't
>> care about multiple systems.  What he does care about is the ability
>> to pull my sister-in-law and I into group-chats on MSN, and the
>> ability to send files to us over it.  Jabber with an MSN transport...?
>> Even if I get him to go 'ooh, pretty' at Rhymbox, there's no way I'd
>> get him onto 
>> Jabber if he couldn't have working group-chats and file transfers to
>> his existing contacts.
> 
> Exactly.. I agree with Rachel.
> 
:
:
> 
> You don't need one big portal for this. We'll need good Jabber servers
> ofcourse. I don't think portals are a bad idea but personally I believe
> more in local portals. Just call it the polish model ;) Everyone who
> will "switch on" a Trillian user onto the Jabber network will know a
> server what server is good for that Trillian user (they use it
> themselves ofcourse).
 
An option could be to target ISPs so they can provide a multi-transport
service to their customers.

Why? ISPs (apart from AOL) have very few vehicles to maintain awareness but
a giveaway IM skinned with their branding connected to their servers would
be a very useful and sticky feature. The local portal route.

I am keen to see Jabber as the enabling technology for intercommunication -
the next level on the IP stack  as it were - not have it relegated to just
another Chat community, which is what client-side transports imply.


> 
> In the end, I think a lot user will switch to using Jabber, at least
> alongside other networks, wich will make things a lot easyer for those
> of us that want to use a Jabber client that does not include client-
> side MSN/ICQ/etc. implementations like Trillian. Ofcourse, users of
> such messengers still have a bigger reach than Jabber-only messengers,
> but that's the whole idea behind such messengers.
> 
> Jabber will never "win" in a marketing battle, nor can we use an OS
> monopoly to force our client on users. But with a mix of good servers,
> local portals, and just as critically, decent support for Jabber in the
> multi-protocol clients, we can reach a "critical" mass, where
> competition will be more on features and possibilities. And I think we
> *all* agree that Jabber with it's advantage of being an open standard
> that is open for use can have a big lead on the competion when it comes
> to that. 

I would say that I have almost all buddies on MSN and Yahoo. All have moved
off ICQ (where I too started) and none are on AIM!

Tim
>