Jabber: Finally, an open protocol

After reading the instant_messengers article by Andrew Min I am amazed at how little we have advanced in VOIP/Instant Messaging and how much greed stops people from helping each other out. Pidgin Homepage which is a desktop jabber client which has come a long way in making communication easier is getting quite popular. As of January 2007 there was 50 mil Jabber users 57 mil. AIM/ICQ users 27 mil msn users 22 mil yahoo and 9 million skype. By now Jabber must be the most used protocol. Personally I have 83 jabber contacts, but only 61 are invited to chat with me. I must not email them enough. Having to ask permission to phone someone must be a weird experience for a newbie. Especially if they don't get many spam emails or telemarketers.