The speed has gotten better recently. It usually sends messages in under 1 second. The UI is still a little laggy when switching tabs but everything is slowly getting more polished and faster.
Yes, sure, good for a PoC, but there are reasons ejabberd exists.
One hour later, a lot of stuff was still being sent back and forth. I still could not join the channel, and there was still no user-friendly feedback on the failure.
These are fundamental flaws in usability and design that really need to be addressed before the system can gain more widespread acceptance. Have they since been corrected, or have improvements been made to mitigate them?