The Null Device

Facebook are adding a XMPP gateway to their instant messaging service, which has, until now, been tied to their web site, running in the browser frame. (Sure, there have been unsupported hacks, like the Adium/Pidgin driver, which pretended to be a web browser, but they were unsupported and less than ideal; there was, for example, no way to shut down IM in the browser whilst staying online in your chat client.) Anyway, this should be a pretty big boost for XMPP (also known as Jabber), an open instant messaging protocol also used by Google Talk and the chat services of various other sites (such as LiveJournal).

I wonder whether Facebook will use XMPP to provide additional functionality, such as allowing status updates by instant message, or sending notifications to users' messaging clients.

¶ facebook im internet xmpp 0

It's a good day for open standards; firstly, Yahoo (partly) embraces OpenID and Microsoft commit to opening their document formats, and now AOL are moving AIM and ICQ to the XMPP protocol. They now have an experimental XMPP server at xmpp.oscar.aol.com, with usernames being the user's AIM ID or ICQ number followed by @aol.com. They also seem to have a SIP server at sip.oscar.aol.com. Could this be the end of proprietary, locked-in IM networks and the start of an age in which IM is a commodity service, running on open standards, much like email?

(via /.) ¶ aim aol icq im open standards sip voip xmpp 0