Is XMPP the 'Next Big Thing'

Open Standard Lover writes "XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) has been getting a lot of attention during the last month and it seems that the protocol is finally taking off as a general purpose glue to build distributed web applications. It has been covered that AOL was experimenting with an XMPP gateway for its instant messaging platform. XMPP has been designed since the beginning as an open technology for generalized XML routing. However, the idea of an XMPP application server is taking shape and getting supporters. A recent example shows that ejabberd XMPP server can be used to develop a distributed Twitter-like system."

Comments

Am I too late...

[abigsmurf]

To try to standardise how this is pronounced? eg. "wizzywig", "scuzzy" etc.

'Zemp' would be a nice easy way of saying this.

XMPP as a silver bullet?

[webword]

One thing often overlooked by people is that is kills vendor lock. There are several government agencies which use a proprietary messenging system for instant messenging. Once you introduce true XMPP-compliant products, this kills the stranglehold that some of these vendors have. I'm sure this is true outside the government too.

Re:buzzwords are my favorite

[TheRaven64]

Why not? The web is basically a way of sending XML to users. XMPP is a way of sending XML to users. AJAX is an ugly hack. It's fine for sending data from the client to the server, but to get updates from the server you need to keep polling. With XMPP, the server can push XML fragments to the client whenever it wants and some client-side JavaScript could then process them into the DOM. There was a proof of concept a few years ago (before AJAX was a buzzword) where someone integrated an XMPP client into a web browser and used it to deliver updates to the page.