[jdev] a vision

[Matthew Wild]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 8:05 PM, Justin Karneges
<justin-keyword-jabber.093179 at affinix.com> wrote:
<snip>
>  First they visit the Psi website, then suddenly
> they are signing up for a jabber.org account...  WTF?  Seems shady.
>
> Speaking of "first they visit the Psi website", Christopher argued that users
> will start at the client, mainly because it is the face of the service.  They
> will see the software running on a friend's computer, or they'll see a
> screenshot or such, and think "Hey, that's pretty cool, I want that."  The
> approach of going to jabber.org and having to pick a client is backwards.
>

Interesting. I had never quite thought about it this way before. I
agree. The problem though is that it is the ideal. What we currently
have is far from ideal, because we still have to serve these thousands
of users who simply type "Jabber" into Google.

The ideal is that operating systems will come pre-installed with
clients, and that ISPs will be hosting servers. The former is already
achieved in 2 major operating systems, the latter has been achieved in
at least one case. Still a long way to go though.

> If your vision is to take on Skype directly, it sounds like what is needed is
> a strong front-running client that has matching branding of the service
> itself.  To most users, the client and service would be synonymous with each
> other, as is the case with Skype, MSN, etc.
>

Again, I can't wait :)

> The big question of all is whether it is the job of jabber.org to compete with
> Skype.  Aren't there others in this space already trying to do that?  If
> jabber.org is truly competitive, and no longer a self-defeating reference
> service, is it still fair to use the "Jabber" name?  Peter, you may remember,
> one of the options we discussed was to actually get rid of jabber.org
> entirely. ;-)
>

Well by using the "Jabber" name we no doubt bring upon ourselves
responsibilities associated with doing so. This includes being a
reference service (on XMPP) and inevitably a kind of hub site for the
network in general (on HTTP). If we were to disband jabber.org I think
it would set adoption back quite some way, confuse users and leave
them with nowhere "official"-looking to turn to. (Not that we're
"official"-looking right now, but I'm hoping that's to change).

I had told myself not to reply to this thread, but your post at least
stood out as something worth thinking about :)

Matthew.