> > I feel it's becoming obvious that the only way Jabber will have any impact > > in the IM world is to grow fast enough and big enough that other IM > > systems have to sit up and take notice. So what do we need to do in order > > to grow that fast and become that ubiquitous? > > I agree 100%. > Peter - Can you post this question on JabberCentral, so that we can get end > user feedback on what features will make users switch to Jabber.
Speaking as someone who has recently moved to Jabber. (Er, made the change over on Thursday?) The reason I moved was because my previous IM (icq) wasn't working, in that there was no Linux client that would work reliably anymore. (As an aside, I've since discovered that the AIM transport is more reliable when talking ICQ people than the ICQ clients, Go Figure.) The obvious solution to this was of course to move to a IM that was supported on my platform (Linux). And, since this is something that I'm vaguely interested in as a programmer, something preferably Open Source. Jabber is basically the only thing that fits that bill. I wouldn't have moved if I couldn't talk to my friends on ICQ. I wouldn't have moved if I didn't at least have the features that I had on ICQ (which, since they keep changing the protocol, is "Bugger All"). Another thing that helped me move was the fact that I was able to convince a large portion of my friends to also make the jump and go to Jabber as well, as they were basically in the same boat as me -- ICQ just didn't work. What makes a IM system popular is the people on it. You don't use an IM because of features, or because the client is "pretty". You use the IM because the people you want to talk to are also on it. Jabber has a major advantage here because of it's gateways to other networks. Why I was concerned about changing to Jabber: * I was uncertain if there was going to be a reliable gateway to my previous IM (ICQ). You want to make sure your transports are up to date and reliable, and you want to advertise that they work. You want to advertise what features you can and can't do for each IM. You want something on your web page that they work as of "YYYY-MM-DD" and update that to be as close to todays date. People don't care that ICQ worked last year, but if it works reliably today, then they are interested. * How reliable it was. A friend who had tried it previously had said that he had found the servers unreliable (it appears they were being regularly restarted), and the clients buggy. This lead to us making sure we set up our own server (even though we had little to no idea what on earth we were doing). Since he examined Jabber, a lot of progress appears to have been made, both with the servers and the clients. In short, I think Jabbers a great system, and Thanks to all of you for making this happen. -- There is a 20% chance of tomorrow. _______________________________________________ jdev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev
