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?]
"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 don't see the sense in that. There's so much evidence to the contrary.
May as well say people desperately need a universal language. May I interest you in Esperanto?
Obligatory XKCD
But more important, the requirements listed are simply out in left field. Video and audio are not instant messaging requirements. Video and audio are both, by their very nature, dealing in linear time. They cannot be "instant".
Cut back to a more realistic list of "instant messaging" and you have some hope of finding a solution. Perhaps accept that "secure" isn't as necessary, too. If you're dealing with top secret things, or assuming that a message that claims to be from your boss telling you to do something expensive or stupid RIGHT NOW, then maybe you shouldn't be "instant messaging" in the first place. Or at least not trying to shoehorn your critical security issues onto an application that most people don't need anywhere close to that level of security for.
XMPP is nice but it suffers from.. I don't know how to put it. It tries to be /too/ universal and and open.
Meaning that it supports so many deployments and scenarios and options that setting it up quickly becomes a daunting task. It does everything "properly" which means you're stuck in certificate hell.
It also sucks for mobile. No. It does. Mobile devices depend on the message push services built in to their OS/account framework. (Apple ID or whatever google is calling their crap today) Mobile devices cut apps off after their idle and there's no way for XMPP to deal with that behavior.
We don't need a new protocol. We need a new service. XMPP can be the base for it but the service will take care of wrangling all the odds and ends of platforms together - Tying togther 3rd party systems and interfaces, unifying auth and login, etc.
It needs to be simple and it needs to work so well that users gravitate towards it because it's better.
None of the popular services care about interop because it's in their best interest to keep users in one place. That's why we have competing islands of messaging services - And really.. It's not all that bad as it is. Whatever is better gets used. Whatever is worse gets discarded.
There is XMPP but there are too many vested interests.
If they are they will be willing to pay a dollar or two to buy and install a client and refuse to communicate with ad supported spyware. But privacy is over valued by a small section of techies, who shout very loudly. Most people sell their most private and intimate info about themselves for 25cents off a loaf of bread. For another 25cents they will sell info about you too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You could be that guy. You know the one: the one who tells all his friends "This is what I use. Use that to contact me, or e-mail me instead."
For the most part, I'm that guy. I use one IM program for personal use, and another for professional use (due to corporate mandate), and that's it. The only exception to this is as I do have a Facebook account, if someone wants to message me there I'll accept these messages as well -- when I'm at my computer and logged into the web interface. I have no intention of installing their Messenger client on my mobile devices.
Then again, I don't feel the need to have people messaging me all day. My messaging contacts list consists of about four immediate family members, and that's it. Guess I'm just not social enough for "social media" and IM (for that matter, I don't own a cell phone either. I go out not to be disturbed by IM and phone calls -- why would I take the annoyance with me?)
Yaz
If you go back to the RFC, you'll find SAML and SOML as smtp keywords: they mean deliver as mail or immediate message (unix write(1)) or as both mail and IM.
davecb@spamcop.net
We have no instant messaging problem. We just have a robust constellation of competing systems, serving different communities. Why is that as problem?
- My teen has a Snapchat community, an Instagram community, as Facebook community, a Pinterest community she hides from me, a Twitter community she denies, an SMS constellation, and a variety of less visible communities gathered around video, music, photo, and mixed media paradigms. Some of the members overlap and are pasrt of several communities, some of these communities serve specific purposes, some are flash mobs instantiating and disappearing quickly. She manages her various communities by platform sometimes. These are 'where she is' at any given moment, sometimes in more than one place at a time. Oh, and she has email too. Several of them.
- I don't want a messaging platform mixing my Facebook and G+ communities. Leave them separate. Some overlap occurs, but I can manage that.
- SMS is not very useful on my desktop PC You want to do some Universal Inbox of 'Follow Me' concept for 'messaging'? Please don't.
- I get messages from entities also. When Amazon delivers an order to me, I get SMS, an email, An Amazon app notification. I got one when it was scheduled for delivery. And when it was 'shipped'. And when it was ordered. I get 12 messages for that one order. If I ordered multiple items from different fulfillers, add 9 messages for each different fulfillment channel. It pollutes my life. I turn some of them off, and they creep back in. Multiple apps send me notifications. They are 'messaging' me. Some let me turn off notificaiotns, abnd they keep right on sending them. Some 'apologize', they blame their own app, most ignore me. The cost of 'free' is real.
- I rarely use or send videos. They are horribly inefficient for simple, spoken or written communication that does not require visuals, and I loathe how-to videos that waste 70% of their duration on establishing shots, personal anecdotes, uncomfortable drivel, wasted time and noise. Give me a step-by-step please. A list.
- Email is highly underrated, still. I carry on conversations in email very well if the correspondents keep up. At work I get IMs from the loathsome Skype For Business client I'm given, and despite the 'instant' intention people regularly turn away and let a chat linger for minutes. Instant is the behavior, not the app. Email is better than you think.
- I'm guessing the real complaint is having to manage the address books, friend lists, etc. that these platforms use. I refuse to use my Facebook/Linkdin/Google Contacts to log into multiple platforms. I don't want to share my contact info in Facebook with my Linkedin community. Or with Google, G+, Pinterest, etc. I have good reasons to keep separate communities separate.
We do NOT have a problem with proliferation of messaging platforms. If you think you do, leave some of them. Everyone you deal with online is either a member of more than one of your communities, or they are as member of one you will keep.
No problem.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The only reason XMPP failed was cause everyone (ie: Google, Facebook, etc) cared more about user capture than interoperability. This is all the more obvious considering that they HAD support for it, but then killed it off for no reason.
XMPP supported almost everything except possibly real-time video. Well, apparently the protocol itself *does* support it, but because no one actually cares, it's never seen the light of day. At least I haven't.
Everyone conveniently ignores the fact that because HTTP was a universal standard, it allowed a *ridiculous* variety of tools and systems to be developed on top of it. The internet as it exists today, wouldn't, if not for that ubiquitous standard.
But as usual, lessons in history pale to short term profits.
That's the solution. It's well documented, it's a federated protocol, it's already here.,
Of course, you need to convince Google to restore it and people to give it a try (again).
With the Google part being very important!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
SMS is expensive in most countries, and if younwant to add pictures, MMS is even more expensive. So that's not an option. The success of WhatsApp in some countries, with a near 100% coverage, comes from the fact that they were first in a market where the telcos earned tons of money with sms. Now that Facebook is trying to bloat it into Snapchat it remains to be seen for how long though.