See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Message_delivery_scenario
On the subject of federation, here's something I posted to my blog about a
month ago; it's a follow up to a comment I had made re the fact that
contact pages on Facebook have no drop-down option for generic XMPP
servers:
I probably should’ve elaborated on my comments. My point re Google Talk
is that Google Talk is basically an implementation of a pre-existing
protocol called XMPP. The revolutionary thing about XMPP with regards to
chatting is that it’s designed so that you can communicate across
providers. E.g., I can have an XMPP account through Organization A, and my
friend can have an XMPP account through Organization B, and we can still
chat. The irony with regards to Google’s implementation of XMPP is (1)
that when Google Talk was launched, you couldn’t actually communicate
across providers even though you should have been able to, and (2) that
most people think of Google Talk as a service in-of-itself (and it’s
possible that Google marketed it that way) even though it’s really part
of a greater system.
That Facebook doesn’t allow users to list generic XMPP providers (i.e.,
XMPP providers besides Google) on their contact pages is not a big deal to
me in a personal sense, but it is amusing to me in a “political” sense.
I’m not screaming “conspiracy” but I do find it sadly fitting that
Facebook — itself very much a closed network — would fail to
acknowledge the existence of the thousands of providers which implement
XMPP, while acknowledging an implementation of XMPP (Google Talk) that
historically did not communicate across networks or advertise the fact that
it could do so. It wouldn’t be hard for Facebook to allow users to
indicate XMPP on the contact page: a box that reads “XMPP (e.g., Google
email address)” would do the trick.
Systems like XMPP are considered important (and increasingly important) by
those who care because cross-provider communication appears to be a dying
phenomenon. The remarkable thing about “Web 1.0″ (and specifically the
personal home page and email) is that you can link to anybody or anything
you want and you can send a message to anybody you want. It doesn’t
matter who is hosting your website and it doesn’t matter who your email
provider is. The same is not true for many implementations of “Web
2.0.” If you’re on Facebook but not on MySpace, and your friend’s on
MySpace but not on Facebook, how do you link to him (i.e., tell people you
are friends)? How do you send him a message? (Or, how do I respond to
President Obama’s tweets if I’m not on Twitter? How do I join the
Facebook group for my favorite political cause if I’m not on Facebook?
And what are the implications when membership in a closed and private
service is a prerequisite for political engagement?) The great irony about
“Web 2.0″ is that it is a step back in many ways; even AOL — who, of
course, controlled much of Web 1.0 — let you send email to non-AOL users.
Certainly, Web 2.0 services like Facebook or Twitter are empowering and
liberating in that they provide voice to consumers in ways and on scales
never seen before. Yet, such services also involve a loss of user power and
user freedom in that there are real limits to what you can and can not do.
Imagine, for example, all information and communication on the internet
handled by one or two big providers; worse, imagine that nobody outside of
these networks can see, respond to, or utilize this content (and let’s
say these networks or called, I don’t know, Facebook and MySpace).
I totally get that some people just don’t care — everybody is free to
make their own decisions — but I do care, and I regret that it sounded
like I was just whining about Facebook’s contact box; I was speaking of
more general concerns and I should have been more honest.
On Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:55:10 -0700, RhinoKitty rhinoki...@gmail.com
wrote:
Bears repeating:
MySpace and Facebook are like Romeo and Juliet, he said. If Romeo is
on one system, and Juliet is on the other, then there is no way they will
ever become friends. Evan Prodromou
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