XMPP Essay Says Visibility, Not Features, Is the Key to Growth
An essay argues that network effects remain the central obstacle for Jabber/XMPP and urges users, publishers and creators to make the open protocol more visible.
Jabber/XMPP’s biggest barrier to wider adoption may be visibility rather than software quality, according to an essay published on 14 September and linked through Hacker News.
The essay argues that messaging services become more valuable when users can reach people who are already on them. It points to regional differences between LINE, WhatsApp and iMessage, as well as Google’s repeated attempts to build a messaging service, to illustrate the difficulty of overcoming network effects.
It compares XMPP with Matrix, Delta Chat and Mastodon, arguing that federated platforms can struggle to gain traction even when they offer capable software or polished interfaces. The author cites Android and F-Droid download figures for Conversations and Element X, while noting that such figures are imperfect proxies for active users and are not directly comparable.
The author also describes Signal as functional despite criticising some usability issues, concluding that reliable delivery and the ability to reach existing contacts matter more to users than an extensive feature list. The essay presents XMPP as an open, federated protocol and Matrix as a competing publicly documented system with a more unified reference client.
To improve XMPP’s prospects, the essay recommends making the protocol easier to encounter in everyday use. Suggested measures include publishing XMPP addresses, adding “Share via XMPP” options, discussing the protocol at events, accepting questions through XMPP and distributing newsletters or updates through the service.
The author argues that these steps would increase the protocol’s exposure at relatively little cost, while acknowledging that users can reasonably differ over XMPP’s practicality and readiness.
