Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat

> So let's be real here, this was maybe a mistake in communication, but not the reason XMPP never took on. XMPP, from it's inception, always had the problem that it was never as easy or even discoverable as other IM services, and in all the years I used it, only tech-related people ever were in my contact list, until they started to drop of, one after the other.

You hit the nail on the head -- XMPP is a protocol, not a service.

Providing a service costs money, and if you don't charge directly for it, you have to make up for it in other ways, eg selling ads via some sort of captive client.

XMPP's open nature directly conflicted with the economic model of providing an IM service, so there was never much incentive (from the service provider's perspective) to use XMPP.