[jadmin] Advertising xmpp

[Sander Devrieze]

2008/1/5, Samuel Penn <sam at glendale.org.uk>:
> A small list would be better than a big list

Why?

> (as long as there's an
> option to type in any server of course). XMPPs biggest strength, is
> also a marketing weakness - since anyone can run a server, you have
> no name recognition.

/me pokes once more the XSF regarding standardize the use of one of
these: Jabber/XMPP/Talk/something else

> All the big IM systems people are used to are
> closed, so there's probably an expectation that people on the same
> IM system have an address that says what system they're on.
>
> An IM address of xxxbob at jabber.org makes it easier for people to
> figure out that they're using Jabber, and they can use it to talk
> to xxxalice at jabber.org. If Bob has bob at someserver1.org and Alice
> signs up to alice at otherserver.com then there's no clues there to
> make them think they can talk to each other. If both are using
> different multi-protocol clients, then possibly they also didn't
> install those clients because they supported XMPP.

My main email address does not indicate it is an email address. People
just call it "email address". We currently lack some similar naming
like "email address" and this is a *big* issue (ping to XSF again).
Which name we standardize as the official name of the "XMPP address"
is not that important; the important thing is that we standardize some
name and consistently use this to refer to "XMPP addresses" using this
term. People should associate this term with the XMPP instant
messaging technology, just like people today associate the term "email
address" with SMTP addresses.

Possible names
============

1) Jabber ID/JID (or Jabber address)
o Advantages
** historical roots
o Disadvantages
** trademark difficulties
** does not sound that good in different languages
** does not describe the service very good
** confusion: is this the same as XMPP?

2) XMPP ID/address
o Advantages
** less confusion
o Disadvantages
** looks ugly
** difficult to pronunciate

3) Talk
o Advantages
** looks nice
** easy to pronunciate
** easy to understand
** better in differet languages
o Disadvantages
** people may associate the technology with Google (the prevent this,
Google has to do a considerable branding campaign to make clear that
"Talk" has nothing to do with Google)
** there exists another old technology with the same name

4) Instant messaging address/IM address/Chat address
o Advantages
** clear and simple name that describes it very good
** good in different languages
** this name will help the adoption of XMPP for instant messaging as
it is a predatory name (for closed chat systems)
o Disadvantages
** it will take some time until the masses will not associate this
name with closed chat systems any more: possible initial confusion
** maybe for some people too general

5) Contact ID/Contact address
o Advantages
** this name can be used to refer to both email and IM ("My Contact ID
for email is me at example.org and my Contact ID for instant messaging is
me at example.net" or "My Contact ID for both email and IM is
me at example.com")
** no confusion with other chat systems like #4
o Disadvantages
** maybe for some people too general


My personal preference order looks like this:
1) names #4 and #5
2) name #3
3) name #2
4) name #1

> Possibly, when installing a client a prompt like "Did you know that
> you can chat through Google Mail? Do you want to connect to your
> GMail account?" might help the user to make better use of contacts
> they already have, and identify people they can chat with.

Do you have any suggestion for how to implement this in the best
(usability etc!) way?

-- 
Mvg, Sander Devrieze.