[jadmin] Advertising xmpp

[Samuel Penn]

On Saturday 05 January 2008 12:48:14 Sander Devrieze wrote:
> 2008/1/5, Samuel Penn <sam at glendale.org.uk>:
> > A small list would be better than a big list
>
> Why?

Is there an advantage to a big list?

  * It's harder to maintain.
  * If you list lots of small unreliable servers, people who
    choose them are likely to get a bad impression of XMPP.
  * It may be confusing as to what the differences are between
    the servers, when really there isn't any.

Giving a user a big list of options, without any sensible way of
determining which they should choose, seems pointless. They will
most likely just choose the first in the list.

I can't think of an advantage of having a big list (it doesn't
mean there isn't one, just that I can't think of one and haven't
seen any mentioned here).

Email clients don't present a user with a big list of email servers.

On Saturday 05 January 2008 12:55:29 Tomasz Sterna wrote:
> And who will be the judge which servers are "more equal" to be included
> on the list, and which are "less equal" and won't be included?

Does it matter if you're not on the list? Are there many organisations
running jabber servers who care whether some random user signs up to
them rather than another organisation? Google might, but it seems to
me that most XMPP servers are targetted at particular audiences
(employees of a company, members of an organisation) rather than trying
to aim for market share. I could well be wrong here, and I'd be first
to admit that I'm probably in over my head since I'm not really involved
with the XMPP community.

If you want to connect to an unlisted server, you just type in your
existing JID. Not listing a server does not prevent someone from using it
(or at least, it shouldn't).

To answer the question though, the judge of who to include will be
either the software authors, or the software packager (so a Linux
distribution or PC re-seller might want to include servers run by them).

On Saturday 05 January 2008 12:48:14 Sander Devrieze wrote:
> 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).

Yes, I agree. We're in the unfortunate situation that the open protocol
came along after the walled gardens had been set up. People can just say
email address, or web address, without caring about the server
implementation because SMTP and HTTP were open before any of the big
companies realised the importance of email or the web and tried to
create their own versions.

IM has gone down a different path.

> 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)
> 2) XMPP ID/address
> 3) Talk
> 4) Instant messaging address/IM address/Chat address
> 5) Contact ID/Contact address

I like 5 (one reason I use XMPP is because I wanted to be able to do this),
but really requires that more email providers also become XMPP providers.

4 is nicely aggressive. Talk actually makes me think of the old UNIX talk
program. I'd go with 2 or 4.

Something I have noticed is that a lot of people are going down the Skype
route (by this I mean semi-technical friends and colleagues) for internet
communication, which is fracturing things in a different direction. I've
never looked at voice/video chat myself (I'm not enamored with the idea),
but if XMPP could potentially include that, then any name should be
inclusive of video chat.

> > 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?

Both Gaim and Kopete (I'm on Linux) present a number of options when
creating an account, like AIM, Jabber, MSN etc. Very simply, they
could present GTalk as a separate option. Technically, it's the same
as Jabber, but most people won't know this. Alternatively, they
could be presented as the same option (Jabber/Google Mail). In either
case, people who use Google mail might be more inclined to use the
talk facility.

Many programs have a hints and tips dialog that pops up, and the link
between GTalk and XMPP/Jabber could be mentioned there.

Free desktop mail clients (such as KMail in KDE) could also notice
usage of GMail, and link that account to Kopete (the default KDE IM 
application), even if only through a hints and tips dialog.

-- 
Be seeing you,                         http://www.glendale.org.uk
Sam.                        Mail/IM (Jabber): sam at glendale.org.uk