Microsoft's public XMPP server

Microsoft's public XMPP server is located at: xmpp:messenger.live.com. You can double check on IMtrends:
http://www.imtrends.com/do/search_domain_simple?domain=messenger.live.com&x=19&y=7

Microsoft had been testing xmpp:beta.xmpp.messenger.live.com since a few months, but now it is redirecting to xmpp:messenger.live.com.

New server?

IMtrends test results say:

Software
IMTrends couldn't determine the server running behind messenger.live.com.

C2S, but no S2S

C2S stands for client-to-server and S2S stands for server-to-server, which are meaningfull: these describe the connections between clients and servers.

On this matter, IMtrends says:
OK:

• DNS Client-To-Server record
• Client-To-Server Stream

• DNS Server-To-Server record
• Server-To-Server Stream

What does this mean?

This means:

• XMPP clients may be able to connect to this XMPP service
• XMPP servers are not allowed to connect to this XMPP server: Microsoft's XMPP server does not federate with Google's, like Facebook's.
• As a consequence, we still need gateways ("transports") to MSN service, with MSNP or XMPP protocols, in order to aggregate MSN contacts in an XMPP client.

Questions:

• Will Microsoft's XMPP server federate with Google's and the rest of the world?
• Microsoft has invested in Facebook: will Facebook's XMPP server federate with Microsoft's, Google's and the rest of the world?
• Microsoft has bought Skype: will Skype (which already offers XMPP on their client) offer an XMPP server? Will it federate?

JID, Jabber ID, XMPP addresses

Justin Karneges, of Psi and Livefyre fame, brought our attention to JID and authentication.

JIDs are in the form: [identifier]@messenger.live.com.

Which means:

• Users will have long JIDs, instead of the short [username]@live.com: it would have been simpler to provide the JID as the email address, like it is the case on Gmail/Gtalk and TextOne
• I hope [identifier] is the username, or something human-readable...

Authentication mechanism

The client-to-server authentication used is SASL, with a specific and proprietary mechanism called X_MESSENGER_OAUTH2. According to Thijs Alkemade (Adium), it is documented, and "extremely similar to Facebook's OAuth2 mechanism".

Which means that all current XMPP clients are NOT able to connect to messenger.live.com. This new authentication schema will need to be developed and tested.

TLS is required, good point.

Summary

Here is a small summary:

• Microsoft only offers a client interface to their MSN chat, much like Facebook: they both keep their internal and proprietary chat system
• Current standard XMPP clients can not connect to Microsoft's XMPP server, since it has a specific and proprietary authentication schema, unlike Facebook
• Microsoft's XMPP server does not talk to any public and federated XMPP server.

Perspective

This is a big step, and quite a surprise at internet scale (even if some were aware of their beta server). Indeed Microsoft has defended over time their proprietary protocol MSNP (and its mobile version) by changing small bits of their protocol in order to prevent third party clients to connect to their service. A big step, but still a long way to go until full interop and federation with the full XMPP network, including Gtalk, Facebook, and Skype (soon AIM?). ICQ, Yahoo! and QQ are still lagging behind.

Now, given Microsoft's habits to cheat on interop, and "embrace and extend" the open standards, it is needed, not only to run deeper and more strict and exhaustive interop tests, but also run ACID-like tests over XMPP.

What does the technology include ?

Interestingly enough for ProcessOne and the XMPP community, the core platform asset includes an ejabberd based XMPP service to power the real time parts of the service.

Quoting the drop.IO team:

Using the Jabber (XMPP) protocol and through a chain of events mediated by JavaScript, BOSH and XMPP drops are now updated for all users viewing that drop in real-time. We are using ejabberd, which is known for its high level of compliance with XMPP. On the front end we use the Strophe javascript library, which uses a technique called Bidirectional-streams Over Synchronous HTTP (BOSH) to connect to a Jabber server.

Actually, this acquisition strengthens both XMPP as a standard for realtime communication on the web and ejabberd as a reference implementation. Facebook already was using Erlang and ejabberd for their chat service. This acquisition means that there will be even more XMPP, Erlang and ejabberd at Facebook. Given the size of Facebook user base this is another good step for XMPP ubiquity for real time web services.

XMPP stands for Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol and is an open standard XML based messaging protocol. The protocol already powers Google Talk infrastructure, Nokia Ovi service and thousands of large scale deployments around the world.

Given that Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office are the most obvious symbols of desktop domination, this move to web-based applications should not be taken lightly. With desktop applications running through your browser, this is a sign that the browser will play a critical role in the future of communications. Google launched Chrome, Apple launched Safari because they felt it was necessary to control the web platform and could not rely on existing players like Microsoft and Internet Explorer, Opera developing its browser and Mozilla promoting Firefox as the most technology agnostic of the four.

Such competition in the browser space can only lead to greater innovation when it comes to the development of web-based applications. For example, I would not be too surprised if Microsoft launches a multi-platform web-browsing client in the not too distant future. They already did it in the past on UNIX (HP-UX and Solaris) and Mac OS when the first browser battle was at its peak.

These are exciting times for the web, as we are on the verge of it moving on from a basic directory to a dynamic interactive interface connecting users worldwide. With communication increasingly residing on the web, it will be up to companies such as ProcessOne to provide users the tools and applications so that they can communicate and collaborate in real-time via the web, irrespective of platform or location. We are are prepared to provide the needed technologies to support this trend.

Two of the largest internet players today provide two different approaches, both at the same experimental state:

• Mozilla with Weave, a product from its labs, providing a Firefox extension, a opensource server implementation, and a documented protocol
• Google will offer a Chrome feature, Google Talk server, Google account, and maybe a documented protocol, since the code is opensource

It is possible to provide browser data sync client as a cross-browser extension or plugin, a server component which would rely on an existing XMPP server and account of your choice, and a protocol which could well be Bookmarks, Message Archiving, or Persistent Storage of Public and Private Data via PubSub.

This shows the ongoing effort of Google to use XMPP: Talk and Jingle, GMail notifications, Wave, and now data sync.

With Google and Apple using XMPP for its notifications service, XMPP shows itself as a strong infrastructure for a wide array of applications beyond the simple chat.

What is interesting however is that Google tries to leverage a development community platform by building the Wave platform on a distributed federated model, based on the open messaging standard XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). It means that you can use other XMPP / Wave enabled server to provide content for Wave platform consumers. With this move, the actual platform is really not that important. What matter is the API. The real question is whether Google will manage to attract enough developers to support this new protocol. I feel this is another step in the war with Facebook (and its Facebook API), more than an attack toward traditional collaborative platform providers like IBM and Microsoft. However, to appeal to a broader audience, Google market its initiative as "email as it should be". The way of demonstrating the platform hide the essential point: Google's aim is to build a development platform and applications are just their way to promote this initiative. Google Wave is really an initiative that complement Google App Engine and Open Social.

XMPP is already at the heart of several cloud computing platform and is becoming increasingly popular as a glueing tool for various types of services around the world. It is gaining mindshare ans supporters as a near real time protocol to power the next generation of web services and applications.

As Peter Saint Andre explained on his blog, this move demonstrates once more that

XMPP is fast. XMPP is secure. XMPP is extensible.

Will Google succeed ? The fight will be hard to gather a big enough development community. Only time will tell if they can provide the missing piece that everyone was waiting for. XMPP and the extension produced by the XMPP Standard Foundation already cover a large piece of what Google is currently promoting. However, what is sure is that this move strengthen XMPP. XMPP is set to play a major role in the Web infrastructure of tomorrow. Be sure that ProcessOne is preparing as well to be a major player in this upcoming shift of paradigm.

It seems a less complete initiative than IMtrends as the initiative is limited to the top 500 more popular sites for a few couples of countries but it gives interesting results as well. Bottom line is that a bit more than 6% of the global top site have deployed an XMPP service of some sort.

This is a project we will watch as well on IMtrends for future updates.

With many centralised IM platforms every username has to be unique, so users often have to find ways to create an account name that is available (e.g. Fred123) rather than one that necessarily indicates their credentials. This can make verifying the identity of contacts a difficult task - as how can you know that Fred123 is your friend or not?

With an open-standard IM platform users are generally less susceptible to phishing attacks. As it is a decentralised network you can only connect with the domain names (typically their email address) of the users that you trust and when a server connects to your server it has to provide valid credentials to prove that they are the domain they say they are. Also a server can automatically block messages from users not on your contact list, significantly reducing the temptation to click on untrusted links in the first place.

The message here is that users should always avoid opening links from untrusted sources, however it is up to IM platforms to make it as easy as possible for users check the identity of the contacts they are chatting with.

To read more about the recent instant messaging phishing attacks go to http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2237230/multi-platform-im-phishing.

ProcessOne's recent survey of 2,000 mobile users supported this by highlighting that 60% of users are willing to switch from text messaging to instant messaging provided they are sufficiently educated by the operator on how to use it and are provided with clear pricing.

It is great that T-Mobile is taking a positive view on IM, so hopefully other operators will follow suit to provide as broad and, importantly, as interoperable a service as possible. As indicated by our recent survey the key to mobile IM success is to enable users to communicate with each other in real-time irrespective of what device and network they are on.

You can get more details on the article from Total Telecom: Skype not relevant to us - T-Mobile CEO - ]]> tag:process-one.net,2008:en/imtrends/26.302 2008-11-18T10:41:26Z 2008-11-18T10:56:27Z Mickaël Rémond http://www.process-one.net/ Essentially it is a web browser plug-in that will allow Gmail users to conduct video chat sessions with other users. Rajen Singh, senior product manager for Google's enterprise group, stated that this is a "significant” move and is something that Google can see bringing people closer together particularly in a business context.

This is further evidence that video IM will be a useful tool for the business. For instance it can be used as a way to cut travel costs for face-to-face meetings and in the current economic climate, this will be a very attractive proposition for many businesses.

Brian Kraemer at CRN praised the application for its ease of use, "Users can pop the window out of the Gmail interface, just like a Gchat instant message window. Users are then given the option to go full screen with the chat, for an up close and personal experience with your chat partner.”

This further proves that video chat is the next stage of evolution for instant messaging and XMPP (on which Google’s messaging services are based). XMPP server developers like ProcessOne are already developing video and voice chat application for businesses based on XMPP and we see considerable growth in this market in the future.

You can get more details on the articles from CRN - Gmail add is video and voice chat, and Information Week - Google's Gmail gets free video chat.

The goal of the two operations is obviously different. Cisco wants to boost its unified communication platform. It is a move to take a bigger share of the Enterprise Instant Messaging market.

Nokia is not targetting the corporate market but indirectly the end user market through mobile instant messaging. Nokia is thus becoming a player that can act as intermediary for access to large instant messaging network on mobile (for example MSN, AOL, Yahoo!). The Finish company thus become a major player between mobile carrier (and thus users) and instant messaging networks.

This is an interesting operation, as Nokia now has a strategic position and can use this situation as an advantage to promote its own mobile service platform called OVI.

The news has been covered by ZDNET Uk: Nokia boosts comms platform with Oz purchase

We based our calculation on the current number of known XMPP domains. Support for PEP or Pubsub is assumed if advertised by the server. If the server does not advertise it, we cannot know it is supporting Pubsub or PEP so our calculation can slightly underestimate the Pubsub or PEP deployments.

That said, here are the figures for a total of 8258 known servers:

• Domains with Pubsub deployed: 2459 (about 30%)
• Domains with Personal Eventing deployed: 2114 (about 26%)

So, the conclusion is that Pubsub and PEP are available on many servers yet. We should still do much better and using Pubsub and PEP extensible features in ejabberd to build applications will hopefully accelerate deployment and use.

And you? Are you supporting pubsub and PEP yet? Do you have any plan to support Pubsub and PEP soon? If not what prevents you from deploying it?

This is good news for all XMPP server developers and for other independant XMPP server providers.

The full news can be read on Cisco web site: Cisco Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Jabber

Remember that 'Jabber' is a set of standard and free protocols (XMPP published by IETF, and XEPs published by XSF). This announcement about Cisco are related to 'Jabber, Inc.', a private company based in Denver (USA) that develops Jabber XCP, a closed source implementation of XMPP. ]]> tag:process-one.net,2008:en/imtrends/26.283 2008-09-02T07:28:00Z 2008-09-02T10:20:50Z Mickaël Rémond http://www.process-one.net/

The figures are not complete and they only compare relative usages of people using the EQO mobile client. However, it gives a good relative comparison of the instant messaging networks use.

Please, note that Jabber and Gtalk can actually be counted as a single XMPP instant messaging network. In Switzerland and South Africa for example, the XMPP network is close to be the leading instant messaging network.

The full article is available on EQO blog: Global Instant Messaging Market Share - July 2008. ]]> tag:process-one.net,2008:en/imtrends/26.278 2008-08-25T07:43:00Z 2008-08-25T07:49:26Z Mickaël Rémond http://www.process-one.net/ The research carried out by Microsoft researchers Eric Horvitz and Jure Leskovec studied 30 billion instant messages sent using Microsoft Messenger during June 2006 and found that any two people were linked by seven or fewer acquaintances.

As reported by BBC News, Horvitz says "What we are seeing suggests that there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity."

This research is further evidence of the social and collaborative benefits instant messaging can offer both in and outside of the enterprise through linking more and more people together.

You can get more details on the article from BBC News: Study revives six degrees theory.

Please, also note that those statistics do not take into account the size of the domains (the number of total users and simultaneous users peak).

Now, let's get to the data. Here is a breakdown on server usage per type on the 18 july 2008:

We will publish more statistics analysis in the coming months, so stay tuned.