IMPS is dead, long live XMPP
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?
October 16th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Erm, I’m slightly off-topic, but considering that apparently OneSoup provides an IMPS-to-XMPP gateway, I’m wondering if you’d opensource the gateway.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
@kael – it could be a very good option if there is a community interested, and somebody willing to help maintaining the code base.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
So…
does OneSoup IMPS work?
I ask beacause my phone only says “login failed” and disconnects.
But i succesfully log in on other servers, e.g. Yamigo
Phone is Nokia 3110c
Thanks
October 17th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
It works reliably on gtalk & jabber/xmpp, but not so on the other proprietary protocols. If you are having problems on Gtalk or Jabber, write to me privately.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Hey. Just managed to test the service with a cellphone that isn’t mine. It worked pretty well. I’m impressed [The nicknames didn't go well and the Hebrew chat failed, but other than that...]. Tried it with XMPP [My Jabber].
Now, I’ve been looking for a long time for a way to use my ISP WAP as it lets me only make http connections. I couldn’t find any application that will let me connect to Jabber with BOSH [other than Talkonaut which doesn't have the option for my new [old] cellphone].
Onesoup is kind of a saver for me. My only problem is that my Nokia 2610 doesn’t let me create IMPS configurations and I have no idea how to give it some.
About fring, it’s only for symbian based cellphones. It doesn’t help people like me who have Java based ones, not only but it requires a full socket connection which is way more expensive than the forced WAP [They force it because they know you won't use it].
P.S.
It there a way to tell if I get a reply here?
October 21st, 2008 at 11:26 pm
@bug: I feel the main advantage of the built-in IMPS client is the notifications you can get while the client IM app is running on the background, e.g. new message, which are sent through the CIR channel. Unfortunately, the CIR channel offers a number of so-called bindings, none of which is good:
On top comes the blocking issues. You might not be able to configure a 2610 if the operator has blocked it from being able to create new profiles. Now, that’s not unusual, and it’s one of my main issues with IMPS. Operators don’t like it. For a service provider like Onesoup supporting the service across all networks and device clients is painful, pointless, … whatever.
Bottom line, I really think the current IMPS clients are crap, and that notifications is something we won’t get out of them. If I have to write my own client to support HTTP bindings, I’d rather use XMPP+BOSH rather than IMPS.
This is why I feel that Onesoup becoming a client + BOSH gateway to any XMPP server would be a key service for the community. Hell, I could even stick my own ejabberd + protocol transports and be able to offer MSN, Yahoo!, etc. In terms of client, I am thinking to start first with a web client (no native device notifications, just through the web interface via BOSH), and later on add native client(s) for more advanced phones (iphone, android, s60, etc.) which would offer native notifications (vibrate, etc.)
This is great feedback – please keep the discussion coming (you can follow using the comments RSS as stated in the section just before the actual comments start).
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:12 am
Yeah. I can really understand what you’re saying about IMPS and I kind of agree with you. Though it does seem that for cellphones that support IMPS it’s better to go with IMPS [As it runs natively, should keep the battery longer].
Now, about the XMPP, as much as I’d like to be able to connect, I don’t think using web client is the answer. The cellphone web client is very limited and it wouldn’t work as well as an application that works on the phone, at least from my experience. The main problem with web client is the fact you are going to have the messages delayed and load a massive amount of web pages to get the messages passed, also you’d have to send the chat buffer each time, wasting more bandwidth.
If you ask me, the best option would to make a Java client for any cellphone that supports it. After all, you don’t want to block all the users who bought less expensive cellphones like me [or do you?]. Wish I could help if making it, but I don’t know Java. I could help testing it though.
October 29th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
How to write to you privately?
I don’t know so i write here
gtalk also doesn’t want to work
what gtalk ID is : is it ID@gmail.com or ID only?
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Both ID@gmail.com and ID would work. If no domain is found, I assume @gmail.com. You can write to me at imps@onesoup.com.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
[...] wrote about this header a little while ago in my onesoup blog, but since I have received various emails from folks asking me whether I’d continue or not [...]
December 13th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
[...] connect now! « IMPS is dead, long live XMPP [...]
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
[...] question of whether to open source the wireless village code on onesoup came up before, but I thought I should revisit it now to gather more feedback, and open the [...]
September 25th, 2009 at 4:36 am
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