Re:Egypt has blocked encrypted messaging app Signal
by ge0rg on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @12:41PM
(#13222020)
Conversations (mentioned in a different sub-thread) is a nice example of a niche instant messenger focusing on good UX. It is not only standards-compliant, but the author is actively contributing XMPP extensions, moving forward the state of XMPP art.
I don't know much about niche messengers which are not based on XMPP, but most XMPP clients happen to be niche projects themselves, maintained by one or two persons in their spare time.
Re:Egypt has blocked encrypted messaging app Signal
by aaron-lebo on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @09:16AM
(#13219936)
You can look at this thread and see why.
The argument usually is along the lines of: "it can't work because it didn't work".
Niche players take their cues from the crowd, too. If a bunch of people in a forum say that tech is bad and that's the dominant mindset, it's going to limit the people who give it a shot.
This does not explain why small (niche) players go that route, too. It seems you overlooked the second part of the question: While I understand that big players like WhatsApp want to bind all users to their own infrastructure, I don't understand why even the niche instant messangers go through the burden of creating their own infrastructure (or relying on Google's) instead of just concentrating on the client side to provide better XMPP clients.