Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat

> Yep, so the ecosystem rapidly fragmented to the point that you can't depend on ANY feature being present. It's beyond ridiculous. And I can't really blame Google - they tried hard enough to mke it work.

No.. Google didn't try all that hard in the end, and they were one of the main reasons why it didn't work. They implemented what they cared about, didn't care when others complained about Google's not-quite-spec-compliance. This was aptly demonstrated with the Jingle fiasco; Google released a reference implementation (libjingle) that differed behaviorally from what their own clients used, and never actually fixed their clients (or libjingle) to line up. They they
basically sat on that feature set (ala IE6) for many years until they basically threw Gtalk/XMPP under the bus with their "Everything is now Google+, oh, and f*ck interoperability and federation" announcement in May 2013. Even before that point it was pretty hard meaningfully innovate or improve the XMPP ecosystem as a whole when everyone else had to be bug-for-bug compatible with Google/Gtalk.

The other reason XMPP failed, and any alternatives are also doom to fail, is the old spectre of network effects and the fact that it's mostly impossible to monetize via advertising (not unlike RSS) so the big boys have no incentive to support it, much less actually help improve the standards.

So, as a result, federated XMPP's userbase is a rounding error compared to the likes of Hangouts, AIM, Whatsapp, FB Messenger, Skype, and so forth. It's only advantage at this point is its network effect, and new entrants won't even have that. I just don't see any new F/OSS entrants having the resources to buy enough mindshare/marketshare to make a greenfield design worth the effort.