Over the past few months, I’ve been running this service on alpha for the public. The intent of being alpha was to test the software, and to find out what uptake such service would have. The results are mixed, and I wanted to share them with you.

Our uptake, with absolutely no publicity, has been fantastic. As we speak there are 15 concurrent users chatting using onesoup, and over the last month alone we’ve seen over 200 new users come to onesoup. This is really great. But it’s far from impressive. Yamigo, which was the first free IMPS service provider, built over the years a registered customer base of close to 150,000 users. This may sound a lot, but actually, it’s not.

There are more than 150 million handsets with a built-in IMPS client on them, yet only 0.01% of those are used for chat. That’s a very low penetration rate. There are a few possible explanations for this, operators banning access, expensive data plans, and general lack of consumer appetite for mobile IM — I can list a few reasons why that would be the case, but mainly it’s around the inherent difficulty in maintaining an active communication, and the bad state of the clients –.

The built-in IMPS clients are simply not comparable to what one can get today either from a network provider, e.g. Yahoo! Go, nor aggregators like Fring. Additionally, “features” such as use of XML vs WBXML, lack of support for HTTP CIR bindings, limits in the number of contacts in your roster, and lack of presence integration with the address book, have made the IMPS clients fairly useless and unpopular.

I am convinced that IMPS, Wireless Village, is dead: consumers with IMPS clients do not have a data plan, operators don’t like IMPS, and the native IMPS clients are extremely limiting. This is obvious to me now, but I am sure it has been to the manufacturers for a while. The IMPS v1.3 standard is sort of in a limbo state, and most development is going into other standards, e.g. SIP, XMPP … Manufacturers are not betting on IMPS any longer, and neither is OMA. It’s time to move on, and call it a day.

I strongly believe in mobile communications and that onesoup could provide a great service for users. I have been thinking over the last few months how to evolve onesoup forward. Here’s a few decisions so far:

• I will not write a generic native chat client. I believe this space is now well served with Fring.
• I will not write a generic web chat client. There are many options out there.
• I will not create yet another mobile social network. Nough’ said.
• I will use XMPP.
• I will use geo-location.

So, what could be in the works? The intent is to work on a geo-aware XMPP service. A few ideas so far as of how to execute this:

• Allow connectivity to any XMPP service, and add geo-location extensions on top, i.e. onesoup provides the client, and a BOSH HTTP proxy. This is the closest to the current onesoup service, but on XMPP instead of IMPS.
• Mobile-enable an already established partner, i.e. onesoup provides the client, the BOSH HTTP proxy, and the XMPP servers. The partner provides roster, profiles and authentication.
• Focus on a particular vertical, rather than service general IM needs. Something in my mind is location based mobile dating or games. Again, a partnership with an existing player would be certainly required, or some other means of seeding the system.

What are your thoughts? What would you like to do with mobile messaging?