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Comment by zaik | Hacker News Reader

That's why I run an XMPP server for family and friends. It's the IETF standard, no vendor lock-in and has Signal-style encryption nowadays.

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I love XMPP but I onboarded 20+ extended family members just by giving them the Signal group link. I don't want to think what kind of headache introducing my 92 year old grandfather to XMPP would be.

Funny you should say this. It's exactly why I started the Snikket project. I already ran a family XMPP server, but it was nowhere near user-friendly enough, and I was tired of provisioning accounts manually and explaining what an XMPP client was every time someone got a new phone.

I started the project early 2020, obviously with no knowledge of what was around the corner. Then during lockdown managed to onboard ~11 family members entirely remote by sending them a simple invitation link (some via SMS, some via email). The best part of the whole thing was how it enabled my (then) 4 year-old to independently video call 80 year-old grandparents (using an old Android tablet).

Happy to report that a couple of years later it's still the primary method of communication between family members. Obviously it hasn't fully replaced WhatsApp/etc. which they still use for most of their contacts. But still, gotta start somewhere!

Checked out your website, this is an excellent idea and a great approach to fixing XMPP UX issues. Best of luck with your project!

I tried this. and it didn't work! network effect is a thing and its hard to move away as people have to maintain 2 messengers.

> network effect is a thing

Sure is. So is getting anyone to do more than the default.

I have an extended family SMS group, an "after hours" work SMS group, and an SMS group of some people I play online computer games with.

Nobody across any of these groups is happy with the down-sampled videos, the inconsistent emoji reactions, and other SMS oddities. It's a constant complaint across all groups.

I have suggested we switch to Telegram or Signal multiple times. Not a single person is happy with SMS. Not a single person has even bothered to install Telegram or Signal.

It helped a lot that I refuse to be reachable on messengers that are not XMPP compatible. Most of the people I care about actually have reachable chat addresses now. For the rest I fallback to SMS and Email.

How hard was it to onboard less tech savy friends and family?

I am not sure op actually runs that server or was just being sarcastic

Not that hard. Everyone already knows how email works: you have to get an address first, download a client and login. I then showed them where to register (https://providers.xmpp.net) and how to download Conversations. It got easier once a good chunk of my friend group was already available there.

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