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Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

element.io

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Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#41

Post by josteink »

personjerry wrote: post #35

Back in the day before the rise of Facebook, there was an open source service that combined all the popular messaging protocols - MSN, AoL, IRC, etc. It was called Pidgin[0], and it never got particularly big. I see the same thing here. While it's interesting, I'm failing to see what the use case is. What's the niche that needs this solved in a big way? [0] https://www.pidgin.im/

> Back in the day before the rise of Facebook, there was an open source service that combined all the popular messaging protocols

It was not a not a service which was always on and synced between units.

It was a client you had to run on your machine and keep connected. And it obviously didn’t roam.

Pretty much an apples to oranges comparison.

Matrix and Element aims to bring all those things you mention to a single protocol, to which you can connect any client you like, on any device you like, and roam as you like with all your clients always in sync.

It’s what Pidgin used to deliver, levelled up and connected to the “modern” (read: closed) IM-silos the majority of people are using.

It’s definitely different and it’s definitely interesting.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#42

Post by GrayShade »

krageon wrote: post #7

Does anyone know what this product is based on? Is it just a ready-made image with all the bridges preconfigured (and prerequisites such as a small android vm for a viable whatsapp bridge), or has there been some evolution on the existing package? Is there documentation on what was done to achieve this? Purely on the content of the article: Given that the messages are not stored encrypted locally and that this servic…

I've been running the Signal bridge for a couple of months and it seems pretty unstable. Sometimes it stops delivering messages and I have to restart either signald or the bridge. At other times, it broke completely and started working again only after a couple of days, when I updated signald.

I haven't tried the WhatsApp bridge yet because it needs to go through my phone or an Android VM. WhatsApp recently announced support for using WhatsApp Web without the need to have your phone online, but I don't think it's available for everyone yet.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#43

Post by leohonexus »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #19
leohonexus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also one from Fitbit's founder, Texts app - this space is getting crowded! https://texts.com/

I can't find any link between Texts and Fitbit, but I know that Eric Migicovsky founded Pebble (acquired by Fitbit) before founding Beeper.

Ah my bad - I must have mixed them up.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#44

Post by leohonexus »

jakecopp wrote: post #28
leohonexus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also one from Fitbit's founder, Texts app - this space is getting crowded! https://texts.com/

There seems to be little information about the company/people who runs Texts on the website which is strange - where did you find the info of who runs it?

My bad - Beeper is the one that's founded by Pebble founder (not Fitbit). Kishan Bagaria is the one behind Texts.

https://twitter.com/KishanBagaria

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#45

Post by jakecopp »

est31 wrote: post #25
mfer wrote: post #21

From the post… > It’s also worth noting that end-to-end encryption is necessarily broken as messages to (and from) WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram pass across the bridge(s). They store everything encrypted but this may open the door for legal requests to get access.

Yeah ideally they should sell e.g. raspberry pi devices which allow you to self host it at home.

They don't even need to sell this package, it's free and a lot of people do it: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy/

The benefit to hosting by a company is it should be more reliable.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#46

Post by upofadown »

personjerry wrote: post #35

Back in the day before the rise of Facebook, there was an open source service that combined all the popular messaging protocols - MSN, AoL, IRC, etc. It was called Pidgin[0], and it never got particularly big. I see the same thing here. While it's interesting, I'm failing to see what the use case is. What's the niche that needs this solved in a big way? [0] https://www.pidgin.im/

I think this is more like XMPP transports in that is is centralized at the server. Such things tended to end up centralized as it is a lot of work to keep up with the efforts of the people running the services to remain incompatible with the bridges. These days few XMPP servers bother with transports to commercial IM services. I suspect the same thing will happen in the Matrix case.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#47

Post by Gigachad »

personjerry wrote: post #35

Back in the day before the rise of Facebook, there was an open source service that combined all the popular messaging protocols - MSN, AoL, IRC, etc. It was called Pidgin[0], and it never got particularly big. I see the same thing here. While it's interesting, I'm failing to see what the use case is. What's the niche that needs this solved in a big way? [0] https://www.pidgin.im/

Agreed, not sure what the use case is. It’s super trivial to switch between messaging apps and it’s not often that you are having a conversation with multiple people over multiple apps at once and even then it’s still manageable.

The only thing I can think of is people who do not wish to have the app installed for privacy / open source reasons.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#49

Post by solarkraft »

maltalex wrote: post #3

I'm happy to see that element found another potential revenue stream, but will people pay the 5$/month to unify their messaging? I don't know about others but it's not that much of a pain point for me, and I'm using all of the apps they mention - WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram as well as few others like IRC and Discord.

If the available Matrix clients were not a pain to use I probably would.
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