These days, we all use several chat products. iMessage here. Facebook Messenger there. Telegram at times. Slack at work. WhatsApp. Snapchat. Confide. Signal. Line. Kik. GroupMe. Tango. Skype. The list goes on. And that’s not to mention the chat functionality within apps like Instagram. And even Twitter DM. It’s enough to make one long for the days of Trillian.³
I don’t IM with anyone anymore. I don’t have anyone to IM with. I iMessage (SMS) with one person. I receive SMS from 2 different people well I guess 4 if you include my mom and dad via Google Voice. However, back when I was young and social. Trillian (and by proxy Fire.app) were amazing. You could login to every chat service and it was all in a single window. I really loved that integration but we live now in an age of walled gardens where each service needs to deliver ads to you and track your habits so allowing a 3rd party XMPP access to your user base in order to gain marketshare and ultimately make users’ experience better is long gone.