[JDEV] JabberCentral [Was: Trillian Poll]

[Bart van Bragt]

Michael Brown wrote:
> Rachel - seriously, drop the term "Official Client" - please.  That is
> really going to start pissing off other client developers (starting with
> me).
IMO she's mainly using that term because of the lack of a better 
alternative :D

> If there is one true thing in the Jabber Community, it is that no one
> will ever agree on what client is the best.  
There is no one 'best' client. 'Best' depends on the target audience. 
Trillian could be best for me, Exodus could be best for you and Rhymbox 
could be best for my mother :D

 > Also, calling anything an
> "Official" client is going to compound the problem that newbies and magazine
> reviews seem to have, where they assume the client from Jabber Inc is the
> official one, and make broad statements saying "Jabber can't do...xyz"
> because it is not supported by the one client that they reviewed.
True, this is something that we have to be reeeeeally careful with.

> But any website promoting Jabber in general should be client
> agnostic - having multiple clients is one of Jabbers major strengths after
> all.
And it's also one of it's weaknesses. From a political/technical point 
of view it's great that there are multiple clients that are all equally 
official (or not official :D). From a marketing/new users' point of view 
it sucks that there are 30 clients to choose from...

> I really think you are underestimating the average user.  Usually they are
> sent a link from a friend to the client.  If users can navigate between the
> various options of ICQ 2xxx Beta, ICQ Lite, ICQ2GO etc and then have the
> motivation to hunt down something like Trillian, I think they can choose
> between the 4 or 5 top Jabber clients given some user reviews, screenshots
> etc.
Eeeeh, the average user isn't messing around with ICQ version bla, they 
just use whatever download link is bigger on www.icq.com. The average 
user isn't using Trillian, they're using the MSN client that was thrown 
in their face when they started up their packard-bell PC with Windows XP 
pre-installed.

True, quite a few people get a link directly to a client, but IMO that's 
not sufficient. The client sites don't explain what Jabber is, they 
don't explain where you can register, they don't (and shouldn't) give a 
list of servers.

I really think you are overestimating the average computer user :D 
Starting users should be painless. People are really too lazy to read 10 
lines of text. They want some download link, click it, start something 
up, fill in their name and that's it. They are not going to read a lot 
of user reviews, they are not going to read a Jabber User Guide, they 
are not going to search for the info they want :\

 > There are millions of people using P2P file sharing apps, and have you
> seen how many different clients there are now?
True. But did you also notice that 98% is using Kazaa? :D

I know this is a difficult point and I know that the fact that there is 
no 'official' client is a strong point in favor of Jabber but it's also 
one of the biggest problems for new users. I know it was for me. There 
where a lot of clients to choose from and I had no idea which clients 
where popular or which client had which features and which features 
where important. IMO we either need to steer the user towards a very 
short list of preferred clients and give them help in installing/using 
those clients (or preferably that info should be on the site of that 
client). Or we should give really compact/easy/accessible/useful info 
about the most popular clients.

People can start with some client and when they have an idea about what 
Jabber is they can switch to something that better fits their needs...


BTW where is Justin Mecham? He seems to be the owner of 
jabbercentral.com? Or can jabber.net be used? And where is stpeter? :D

Cheers,

Bart