Open IM Federation

I use my GMail account to email people who have their email hosted by someone else. I use my Verizon cell phone to call people who use Cingular. These technologies are based on standards that allow different providers to interoperate.

But the same is not true of IM. As a result users suffer and are forced to use multiple providers or not IM all their friends. Today, we took another step in fixing this by launching open federation. Now you can IM users on other networks. No official partnerships are needed with long meetings full of buzdev folks, lawyers, and paperwork. Just like email, set an SRV record in DNS pointing everyone to your XMPP server. Exchanging email between companies never required partnerships. Even most countries at war allow telephone calls to be made between them. Why should IM be different?

Using open standards has other advantages as demonstrated by the new Blackberry client for Google Talk.

In the meantime, for those of you who know me personally and know my google.com email address, feel free to add me as a Friend in Google Talk (just add my email address as a friend).

And if you don't know me but play backgammon and live in Seattle, I like to meet you!