It also wasn't difficult to set up your own server and bring your own domain, resulting in an easy to remember vanity handle like chat@lastname.tld. I hosted bo

It also wasn't difficult to set up your own server and bring your own domain, resulting in an easy to remember vanity handle like chat@lastname.tld. I hosted both prosody and ejabberd for years for friends and family, and it was orders of magnitude easier than self-hosting a mail server. Sadly, eventually everyone moved to proprietary platforms because file sending worked badly in those days, and mobile XMPP clients were simply terrible (no push notifications and such).