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Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

developers.facebook.com

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Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#51

Post by simoncion »

automathematics wrote: post #30

Also it is worth mentioning that Google Talk !== Google Hangouts Everyone who uses XMPP/iMessage/Adium to connect to Google Talk is: 1) Apparently missing some messages from Hangouts users. Haven't been able to track it down but it's gotten me in trouble with my girlfriend a few times for "ignoring her" 2) Your friends see you as "Online" on hangouts and send you messages, which often seem to relate to #1 (you never…

> 1) Apparently missing some messages from Hangouts users.

Shit, Hangouts itself is an unreliable message delivery system. [0]

At least once an month in both group chats and one-on-one chats I will get messages that seem out of context. Somewhere between many minutes and an hour later, the messages between the OOC one and the previous [1] message will silently appear. The "new" messages are inserted between the previous and OOC message, and bear timestamps that make it look as if they were never missing.

I've even had this happen while I had the conversation in question open in the damn client! It's super-fun to see ten or so "new" messages slide in between two already-delivered ones. :/

So, if you've ever wondering if you had a brain fart and overlooked an important message in Hangouts, you may very well have not!

[0] Yep, I'm using the latest software.

[1] Previous at the time I received the out of context message.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#52

Post by zobzu »

quick, deprecate all the things that are open.

the wave of openneness that started with the web is being extinguished everywhere. mind you, one could improve XMPP, or come up with an open alternative. But this is no longer the focus. Short term money and numbers is/are the focus, as per pre-web companies.

This model always end up being bad for the masses of course, and only good for a few.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#53

Post by Havoc »

acdha wrote: post #42
Havoc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never even turned it on. Since they split messenger off I can no longer read read messages on my cellphone...without installing a separate app. Functionality that worked perfectly fine previously until they decided to disable to force messenger onto people. http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/28/facebook-moving-messages/

Can't you just open facebook.com in your phone's browser? I've been doing that for a couple of years since noticing that it's both faster and more reliable than the Facebook iOS app.

Yeah its tedious though. So mostly I just decide it can wait till I get home and have access to a computer.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#54

Post by simoncion »

nostrademons wrote: post #48
automathematics wrote: post #30

Also it is worth mentioning that Google Talk !== Google Hangouts Everyone who uses XMPP/iMessage/Adium to connect to Google Talk is: 1) Apparently missing some messages from Hangouts users. Haven't been able to track it down but it's gotten me in trouble with my girlfriend a few times for "ignoring her" 2) Your friends see you as "Online" on hangouts and send you messages, which often seem to relate to #1 (you never…

This may not be unique to XMPP...I use regular Google Hangouts with my fiancee (also on stock Google Hangouts) and have found that occasionally messages to my fiancee get to her hours later or not at all. Apparently the Hangouts team doesn't consider "reliable message delivery" to be a key feature. I think people don't realize just how unreliable the major messaging networks are. There was a Reddit thread a year or s…

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one experiencing this Hangouts problem [0]. The lady friend thinks I'm nuts.

Speaking of SMS, when I lived in the American Southeast, I occasionally had SMS messages from friends be delivered months late.

Neither Hangouts nor SMS are the messaging systems of the future. :P If Signal (nee TextSecure) doesn't gain traction, maybe we need a super-sexy frontend over top of email.

[0] Looks like we were concurrently writing up our experiences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9267147

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#55

Post by AceJohnny2 »

cbhl wrote: post #19
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #2

Sigh , yet another nail in the XMPP coffin, at least as far as the general public is concerned. Remember when we had ICQ, and AIM, and MSN Messenger, and Gadu-Gadu, and we were dreaming of a unified messaging system?

It's worth noting that XMPP was based on XML. New hotness is JSON, or maybe even compressed binary protocols.

I don't know if you're being ironic about JSON. Note that jkarneges, who comments elsewhere in this thread, is the creator of Psi [1], arguably the best XMPP-focused messaging client.

The value/burden of XML has always been a topic of debate for XMPP. In retrospect, I think it contributed to its lack of appeal, though the extensibility and readbility (ehm, arguably) it provided were unique back then.

I've long wondered about which alternative base protocols could be used in place. JSON is OK, but may be as much a fad as XML. I've wondered if ASN.1 could be used, but ProtoBufs sound like they're a better fit [2] in that they're simpler, more space-efficient, and backwards-and-forwards compatible (and thus extensible, XMPP's main feature) In fact, it's what Google already uses themselves.

[1] http://psi-im.org/ [2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/protobuf/eNAZlnPKVW4

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#56

Post by simoncion »

throwawayaway wrote: post #45
throwawayaway wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

setup a ejabberd server on a beaglebone and put a web xmpp client on it. encrypt the shit out of everything, get your friends on to it. i'm sure there's valid business reasons to kill xmpp, not just total information awareness pressures from above.

i suggested this because i believe xmpp to be superior to irc.

Step #4 (get your friends to use it) is really hard to do. I tried and failed with my friend group. If there's one non-technical user in the group (or one who is tremendously attached to their Hangouts chat history), you're probably doomed to failure.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#57

Post by nextos »

automathematics wrote: post #30

Also it is worth mentioning that Google Talk !== Google Hangouts Everyone who uses XMPP/iMessage/Adium to connect to Google Talk is: 1) Apparently missing some messages from Hangouts users. Haven't been able to track it down but it's gotten me in trouble with my girlfriend a few times for "ignoring her" 2) Your friends see you as "Online" on hangouts and send you messages, which often seem to relate to #1 (you never…

My rant, apart from all your valid points is that they don't support half of XMPP extensions, including offline messages. So if someone writes to you while offline, you only get an inbox notification in Gmail.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#58

Post by jwise0 »

grandalf wrote: post #6
ipsum2 wrote: post #3

Is there any other way to work with Facebook Chat, now that XMPP is gone?

Directly via the graph api. Simpler than xmpp. Someone recently posted a graph api chat example.

You have to be an app developer for that to work: /me/threads is accessible only to developers of an app, and there is no permission that you can grant to an app to make it work. Otherwise, you get:

  {
    "error": {
      "message": "(#298) You must be a developer of the application", 
      "type": "OAuthException", 
      "code": 298
    }
  }
You get this even if you try to use the Graph API Explorer tool to view /me/threads.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#59

Post by simoncion »

pikzen wrote: post #15

Welp, time to register an account on jabber.org I don't really understand why they took the XMPP API to such lengths (it even displayed OTR messages as [encrypted message], that's not really the kind of thing that comes to mind instantly when I think about an XMPP API) to finally deprecate it. Pidgin will probably see a sudden surge of bug reports.

In my experience (as of about a year ago) the jabber.org servers are -I guess- seriously overloaded. Frequent disconnection or failures to login were the norm for my @jabber.org account. If I had to guess, I would bet that they're under frequent "attack", but I really have no idea.

Does anyone have any more recent information on the health of jabber.org's XMPP service?

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#60

Post by throwawayaway »

simoncion wrote: post #56
throwawayaway wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i suggested this because i believe xmpp to be superior to irc.

Step #4 (get your friends to use it) is really hard to do. I tried and failed with my friend group. If there's one non-technical user in the group (or one who is tremendously attached to their Hangouts chat history), you're probably doomed to failure.

i've had limited success, one factor that helped was me going cold turkey on the alternatives. also you define your own success, gaining a monopoly is rather a high standard!
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