Tagged: gtalk

How gTalk pushed jabber


I remember signing up for a Jabber account several years back. Since there were a lot of Jabber servers to choose from, and really no “canonical” choice, I ended up trying out a few different ones, until I finally settled on the jabber.org server. Of course, since hardly any one I knew was using Jabber at that time, that account was rarely used.

{{ http://floatingsun.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/screenshot6.png|Jabber}}

I subsequently tried to convince my friends to start using Jabber, even issuing a [[http://floatingsun.net/2005/07/28/call-for-jabber/|call for Jabber]] on my blog. Suffice to say that in all I added perhaps three friends to my Jabber buddy list. So much for technological merit driving adoption!

Somewhat naively, in that post I said:


//I should point out that Jabber is meant for (and only for) instant messaging. This means that there is protocol bloat for supporting webcams or voice chats. Use video conferencing or VoIP if you want those. Lets keep IM simple.//

Oh, how wrong I was. There are now official [[http://xmpp.org|XMPP]] extensions for [[http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0167.html|audio]], [[http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0180.html|video]] and [[http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0096.html|file transfer]]! Nevertheless, the basic premise of Jabber remains the same: open, free standard, distributed implementation and rich functonality.

However, it wasn’t really until Google embraced XMPP for Google Talk that Jabber really took off. Even now most end users are not familiar with the technological underpinnings of Google Talk. When Google Talk launched, it was a closed network. That is, though it used Jabber as the communication protocol, non Google Talk Jabber users could not communicate with Google Talk users. After some initial resistance, Google finally gave in, making Google Talk an open Jabber network.

It is kind of unfortunate that one of the main “features” of Jabber — a distributed implementation much like that of email — has essentially been nullified by Google Talk, since the vast majority of Jabber users //are// Google Talk users. Of course, it has been a boon to Jabber as well, since it piqued interest in Jabber from all kinds of commercial interests, leading to the significant increase in interest in the XMPP protocol stack. The extensions I mentioned earlier are just a small sampling of the [[http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/|total extensions available]].

It is interesting, as well as a little disappointing, that good ideas often get ignored not due to lack of technical merit, and some how endorsement by a powerful and recognized brand suddenly lends credibility to them.

A tale of status messages


It is fascinating how communication evolves. For such a long time, we stuck with email and there was hardly any innovation. Then twitter and friends happened with iPhone and other smart devices acting as a timely catalyst. The past year has seen an explosion in “micro” communication: twitter, micro blogging, tumblogs and the like.

Recently I have become aware of yet another such medium. I think it has always been around, but I feel only recently is it starting to shape up as a real communication channel. Yes my friends, I’m talking about status messages. From your gTalk status message to your Facebook status message — we now pay a lot more attention to them than we used to.

And it’s not just that I have started noticing them. When we travel, instead of sending out an email or setting up vacation replies, we update our status messages. If you are like me and leave your messenger on almost all the time, you get into a habit of noticing people’s status message. During the wild fires, a lot of people just communicated their well being and other updates via their status messages. Status messages can also be used to flaunt and impress. In fact, I have actually seen folks putting in that little extra effort to come up with “creative” or attention grabbing messages.

The fact that it is a one way, broadcast, asynchronous medium helps a lot. You don’t need to announce anything to anyone. You don’t have to wait for anyone to reply to you. You don’t even need to face the fear that no one might be interested in what you have to say. For many people, it acts as a light weight vent to let out their feelings and emotions, without the baggage of actually having a face to face conversation with anyone.

You know what would be cool? If gTalk or Facebook or my desktop IM client just keeps a history/timeline of my status messages. I think it will be a very different way of looking at our daily lives. What do you think?


Just found [[http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/11/status-update-f.html|this story]] on Wired. I had no idea that the mandatory “is” in Facebook status messages was such a huge deal!