[rdl]

Yeah, I think one could have built IRC and RSS into good enough products to essentially reach out to everyone currently using Twitter who never used IRC/RSS.

I still think there's an opportunity for something better-than-Twitter, IRC, RSS in the mobile space. Twitter is SMS mobile, but has what is honestly a shitty client experience on (everything, but especially) mobile.

I wish someone would do something with the same initial goals as Diaspora (self-control, etc.), but focused on mobile, with ease of use on mobile as the goal. Snap Chat is kind of a step in that direction, but I'd rather have something where users got to explore the continuum of ephemeral stuff (like Snap Chat) to semi-permanent (like Twitter) to more permanent (like a blog, designed to be referenced in the future) to really permanent (publishing).

[zanny]

Why are you just targeting "mobile"? If you were making a new global chat system, it would almost certainly be cloud hosted and baked into a web app. The main reason that xmpp / jabber don't catch on is that you can't treat it with delayed delivery like you can twitter, and you can't broadcast messages.