[lloydwatkin]

Sounds like what you are after is buddycloud (https://beta.buddycloud.org), lets list its win points:

- open-source - open-standards - free - federated

Keep your own data, talk with whoever you wish.

Built on XMPP and actively contributed to by a great group of developers (admission: I am on of these developers).

When you join up you can find me at [e-mail]

[imaginator]

https://buddycloud.org and https://buddycloud.org/wiki/Buddycloud_HTTP_API to get started.

Or jump into the https://beta.buddycloud.org/[e-mail] to ask any questions about dev issues.

[smacktoward]

This looks really interesting. Is there a page on the site somewhere that gives a high-level overview of what it is and how it works? The wiki has lots of technical details, but nothing I could find that you could email to a decisionmaker and say "you should read this."

[imaginator]

/me nods. I'll write something up this weekend. Thanks for the feedback!