SSH or SSL doesn't get you e.g. end-to-end security; the model you propose is equivalent to chatting via a server over HTTPS, which is indeed very common. (In g

SSH or SSL doesn't get you e.g. end-to-end security; the model you propose is equivalent to chatting via a server over HTTPS, which is indeed very common. (In general, OpenSSH is great but the SSH protocol itself isn't all that special.) Something like TextSecure improves on the security of SSH/SSL for its specific use case: end-to-end security, message-level forward-security even if the receiver is offline at the moment, deniable messages (instead of allowing the receiver to prove you sent them), etc. Many other applications use SSL as a transport and try to add some X-factor (integration with Facebook/GMail/$GAME/...); these applications would still get made if the underlying transport changed to SSH.