ICQ/AIM died when Microsoft made Window come with their own default IM. Then people somehow moved over to Skype, then Microsoft bought skype, but screwed up, so

ICQ/AIM died when Microsoft made Window come with their own default IM. Then people somehow moved over to Skype, then Microsoft bought skype, but screwed up, so people moved elsewhere. And Facebook happened. And smartphones happened. I think you can still reach most people via Facebook. IRC is also going strong! Gaming communities use VoIp services so they can talk in real time while playing games, there are a bunch of services targeting gamers exclusively. Old people still use mailing lists. Young people no longer use e-mail. XMPP is too damn complicated. We need something more simple, that use mostly direct connections (P2P) so public servers only are needed for discovery and NAT punching. The ID could be a public key hash, you just give the public key hash an alias on the client. Then the public key could also be used to encrypt messages. If you lose your private key you just make a new one, and tell your friends to add your new one. Other services can then use the universal ID and peer discovery services to build functionality like sending files, sharing photo albums only accessible by a set of public keys that has to decrypt a challenge to gain access, etc.