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That was the brief glory of XMPP ("Jabber") mentioned above. There was a couple years where you had nearly every Gmail user and Facebook user (and more) availab

That was the brief glory of XMPP ("Jabber") mentioned above. There was a couple years where you had nearly every Gmail user and Facebook user (and more) available in the IM client of your choice via XMPP, and then the "next day" where everyone was gone, XMPP was a ghost town and declared "dead" and you again needed separate apps to talk to "Google friends" versus "Facebook friends" versus the other two nerds that even knew what XMPP was in the first place and were too strong advocates of open standards to install new apps. Sure, it was mostly just the three of you that knew what was lost when you had to install new apps when XMPP "died", but it was clear what murdered it was the dozen or so friends that used XMPP before all that but "chose a side" and were now "Google friends" or "Facebook friends". You may not plan to leave Mastodon, but there's lots of people "just waiting on that Bluesky invite" or "I'd prefer to use Facebook if they supported ActivityPub" and there is a real fear that "everyone" will choose sides again and the sides won't really include Mastodon because Mastodon doesn't have a marketing budget and Mastodon isn't "cool" and Mastodon is "too nerdy". We can't say for sure that it would happen again that way, but it is dark reminder that it happened once in a big way and that some of the same culprits were there when it happened.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> "I'd prefer to use Facebook if they supported ActivityPub" This seems a very unlikely thing. The relatively few people on Earth who might say that seem unlikely to say it.
seba_dos1 3y ago
To be fair, Facebook never federated with XMPP. They just allowed you to use a XMPP client to log into their own network for a while. Google did though, and pulled the described bait-and-switch when depreciating Google Talk in favor of Hangouts (remember those?).
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  > Google did though, and pulled the described bait-and-switch when depreciating Google Talk in favor of Hangouts (remember those?). I feel like this really backfired for Google though! Hangouts does not have a large user base, at least relative to Google's scale.
  - munk-a 3y ago
    Isn't Hangouts dead now? I though Google's new thing was "Meet".
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      Last I heard Meet is dead and there is a new Hangouts which is a rebranded Allo with zombie chunks of Meet, I think? I feel like every description of Google's chat application strategy ends with the punchline, "The Aristocrats!"
  - seba_dos1 3y ago
    > I feel like this really backfired for Google though! Yeah, it did. They handled it really bad. From my experience, back in the Google Talk days I could easily reach my family, friends and people at work via XMPP just because Gmail integration was excellent - no indoctrination required, they were already there checking their e-mails. Once Google forced the switch to Hangouts, it sadly became easier to reach them via Facebook. Nobody really cared to use Hangouts anymore, especially when people started to switch from PCs to smartphones where Hangouts wasn't integrated into Gmail at all, and XMPP defederation meant that I didn't have any reason to stay there either.

robertlagrant 3y ago

> "I'd prefer to use Facebook if they supported ActivityPub" This seems a very unlikely thing. The relatively few people on Earth who might say that seem unlikely to say it.

seba_dos1 3y ago

To be fair, Facebook never federated with XMPP. They just allowed you to use a XMPP client to log into their own network for a while. Google did though, and pulled the described bait-and-switch when depreciating Google Talk in favor of Hangouts (remember those?).

Wowfunhappy 3y ago
> Google did though, and pulled the described bait-and-switch when depreciating Google Talk in favor of Hangouts (remember those?). I feel like this really backfired for Google though! Hangouts does not have a large user base, at least relative to Google's scale.
- munk-a 3y ago
  Isn't Hangouts dead now? I though Google's new thing was "Meet".
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    Last I heard Meet is dead and there is a new Hangouts which is a rebranded Allo with zombie chunks of Meet, I think? I feel like every description of Google's chat application strategy ends with the punchline, "The Aristocrats!"
- seba_dos1 3y ago
  > I feel like this really backfired for Google though! Yeah, it did. They handled it really bad. From my experience, back in the Google Talk days I could easily reach my family, friends and people at work via XMPP just because Gmail integration was excellent - no indoctrination required, they were already there checking their e-mails. Once Google forced the switch to Hangouts, it sadly became easier to reach them via Facebook. Nobody really cared to use Hangouts anymore, especially when people started to switch from PCs to smartphones where Hangouts wasn't integrated into Gmail at all, and XMPP defederation meant that I didn't have any reason to stay there either.