XMPP Viability Debate

The cluster centers on discussions about the XMPP messaging protocol's history, reasons for its decline despite early adoption by Google and Facebook, issues like inconsistent extensions, federation challenges, and spam, alongside arguments for its ongoing relevance and potential revival.

📉 Falling 0.3x Open Source
3,449
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#6896
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
1
2008
27
2009
85
2010
62
2011
100
2012
47
2013
268
2014
185
2015
271
2016
315
2017
177
2018
288
2019
198
2020
132
2021
405
2022
335
2023
249
2024
146
2025
150
2026
8

Keywords

XMPP UX XML IMO IETF MAM TCP xmpp.org AOL UTF32 xmpp protocol federation clients client xml google downsides whatsapp servers

Sample Comments

vbezhenar Mar 18, 2019 View on HN

Nobody buried XMPP. Write good server and client, comparable with proprietary protocols by features and it might work.

jonalmeida Mar 26, 2015 View on HN

To play devil's advocate, what part of the XMPP protocol is dated, that doesn't allow Facebook and Google to continue using it? Maybe if there's a way to update XMPP to include features that shared amongst these services, they can fall back to using it?

poi519 Oct 7, 2016 View on HN

Seems like XMPP is still a viable option.

marssaxman May 23, 2018 View on HN

What else was XMPP ever for?

alexmat Aug 29, 2017 View on HN

What happened to XMPP? Not trying to be snarky, I still use it. Is there an issue I should be aware of?

JustSomeNobody Jan 10, 2017 View on HN

Because it was XMPP based and not a proprietary protocol that they and they alone control.

Zash May 26, 2022 View on HN

How can XMPP have failed when I and many others use it daily? When many things like Snikket and Zoom and WhatsApp are built on it?

sneak Feb 1, 2020 View on HN

Google made it practical and offered widespread federation.It was not used by many people to talk outside of Google servers (federation ability went almost entirely unused), and it suffered from tons of inbound spam problems, so they shut it off.To answer your question directly though, XMPP doesn’t seem to be that great of a protocol. I’ve heard repeatedly that implementing it is a big mess, and that XML was a poor choice. I’m not sure that this is the reason that users don’t use i

dschuessler Nov 4, 2025 View on HN

There is XMPP. Messengers of Google and Facebook used it in the early days. From what I know, it failed for multiple reasons.1. The various clients and servers implemented different subsets of the functionality, which deteriorated UX.2. Service providers have an incentive to lock you in and the average user doesn't mind. So no one pushed for it.

astro1 Feb 20, 2025 View on HN

We've had this with XMPP already.