Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Would You Solve the Instant Messaging Problem?
Artem Tashkinov writes: The XKCD comics has posted a wonderful and exceptionally relevant post in regard to the today's situation with various instant messaging solutions. E-mail has served us well in the past, however, it's not suitable for any real-time communications involving video and audio. XMPP was a nice idea, however, it has largely failed except for a low number of geeks who stick to it. Nowadays, some people install up to seven instant messengers to be able to keep up with various circles of people. How do you see this situation being resolved?
People desperately need a universal solution which is secure, decentralized, fault tolerant, not attached to your phone number, protects your privacy, supports video and audio chats and sending of files, works behind NATs and other firewalls and has the ability to send offline messages. I believe we need a modern version of SMTP. [How would you solve the instant messaging problem?]
People desperately need a universal solution which is secure, decentralized, fault tolerant, not attached to your phone number, protects your privacy, supports video and audio chats and sending of files, works behind NATs and other firewalls and has the ability to send offline messages. I believe we need a modern version of SMTP. [How would you solve the instant messaging problem?]
THere's already a solution for that: XMPP
The reason we don't see it is that the people that _are_ capable of supporting the necessary services behind it (like... for people that don't run their own servers) is that it's difficult to monetize. AIM dropped open support because too many folk use Adium or Pidgin with it, rather than the AIM client, and thus AOL couldn't push ads down it.
Google chat uses XMPP essentially... so if you want a well supported platform, that's it right there.
Check out matrix.org. It is not only a rich IM solution with all the bells and whistles, including multi-devices end-to-end encryption, but Matrix also provides for bridges and proxies to other networks, so that it can be used to unify communication.
It's only 2.5 years old but has already come quite a way!
https://matrix.org/
echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:" net@madduck
Multi-protocol clients are good stop-gap measures that do not require additional protocols.
If you're a developer that likes working on open-source projects, Pidgin / Adium / Libpurple could use your help.
I am currently running Pidgin 2.12 with Jabbber, Skype, Hangouts, AIM, Steam and Facebook active. I stopped using Yahoo when they changed to the abomination that their current protocol is, even though Pidgin does support it with a plugin, and MSN is dead since MS migrated everyone to Skype.
There is also a plugin for Twitter, but I don't use it. So that takes care of 7 out of the 9 that you mentioned, leaving Snapchat and Instagram. If more developers get to work on it, those two could get support as well. Every platforms that works with web-clients can be added.
While some of the list of security features is not that important to most people, being able to have a chat client that Just Works is.
I miss Trillian from ... a decade ago? Has it been that long? It was basically a container program with plugins for the at the time widely used chat protocols: It did AIM, ICQ, YIM, MSN, IRC, Jabber, likely a bunch of other ones I never used. All in one reasonably light-weight program. Click it in your taskbar, check if the friend you're looking for is online, and click his name. That was all the user had to think about.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
pidgin still does this. Currently connected to ICQ, Google Talk, and Office Communicator/SIPE/Office365. Guess I could flip on the AOL Instant Messenger too, but I only had one contact there and he's been dead for a few years.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos