[jdev] [OT] XMPP icons

[Jonathan Dickinson]

I think the main problem (I am no expert) is that most average people see websites as atomical. They connect to live.com and are provided with a IM client that brands itself as live.com etc. The same goes for Hotmail/Gmail/etc.

Jabber can be confusing in that most users are used to connecting to an instant messaging client and only seeing contacts from that realm, unless they use clients like digsby/trillian/etc (which I WOULD THINK are mostly used by the 'less-informed' technically inclined users).

By branding your website with "Instant Messaging (powered by Jabber/XMPP)" you achieve a few goals:

1. Aunt Tillie sees "Instant Messaging" and that is enough for her. She may even see that she can communicate with all her book-club friends that use older protocols like AIM/MSN/etc. and is wooed into downloading a jabber client.
2. Up-and-coming nerd wants to migrate to Jabber/XMPP and either searches for "Jabber client" or "XMPP client": both would get him hits on your page. He notices the "Jabber/XMPP" affiliation and downloads your client (this was me and Pandion when I first came across XMPP).
3. XMPP-addict comes across your website and thinks "cool, this looks like a nice client".

It is enough information without scaring off potential newbies, as well as promoting Jabber/XMPP (remember, some may only know it as one of the two: it doesn't matter which).

As I said I help out a lot of Aunt Tillies, and I am familiar with the way they think.

> And I really not see how the term "Jabber" could have anything
> confusing, in order to differenciate from proprietary networks, waiting
> for it to become really the used standard everywhere.

Jabber does not mean "Instant Messaging" to newcomers, if you want it to be used everywhere you need to tell people what it is!!!

If you go to messenger.live.com the first words you will probably see are "Messenger" and a quick scan reveals "Instantly connect". Visit Coccinella and you get "Chat Client". WHOA! Now the user really needs to decide. Apon further reading they realise that MSN can only communicate with MSN, where Coccinella can communicate with everyone. MSN: 0, XMPP: 1. Now visit the Jabbim website, and the user is presented with confusing terms like XMPP and Jabber, which they have never heard before. MSN: 1, XMPP: 0.

It doesn't matter if Aunt Tillie knows if she is using XMPP or not, as long as she is. And if someone asks her if she is she will be pleasantly surprised that she is, indeed, using Jabber/XMPP.

Corporate identity people. Look at Apple, taken out of context (as a newcomer) you would probably think that they are a fruit and veg company...