Title: Settling the IM war
Subtitle: Creating an open and federated protocol for instant messaging
Abstract: The world of Instant Messaging is populated with hundreds of providers - all incompatible with each other though history has shown that walled gardens are not sustainable. Why are we unable to agree upon a standard to communicate with each other?
Description: Imagine you would need a separate web browser for every website you visit. Want to shop on Amazon? Download the Amazon browser. Want to surf Reddit? Download the Reddit browser. What seems completely ridiculous in the context of the World Wide Web is a sad reality for instant messaging. The recent years have spawned a sheer number of incompatible instant messaging solutions and forced the user to have multiple accounts with different providers that all do pretty much the same thing. Slack for work, Skype for your parents and Whatsapp for your friends. Wouldn't it be great if they were some kind of standard that would make all th