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by MattJ100
5227 days ago
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> Other examples that all suck for this reason: Apple IDs. Windows Live ID. Jabber. Erm, to clarify, Jabber isn't an authentication system. It's a decentralized IM network, structured similarly to email. A user is identified by their username on a given host, just like email. It (sensibly, in my opinion) re-uses the same format for that, user@host (I don't think user!host would be quite as intuitive...). This does not mean a Jabber ID is an email address. It can be, but they are two distinct properties of any given identifier. So saying it 'sucks' because of the format of its identifiers happens to look like an email address, and some services choose to enable both email and IM on the same ID, is stretching it a bit. |
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Though on many mail providers these days, it's the other way round that's true. A lot of people use GMail, but few realize that this means they also have a JID (Jabber ID) and can use XMPP, since Google opens their servers.
It's a shame, really. Google seriously missed a chance to kill all of the mess of a thousand and one IM providers (each with their own, proprietary protocol) and replace it with the open and partially decentralized XMPP protocol, which anybody can implement and run.