Jabber (or to be precise xmpp) is a messenger protocol, which you can use with pidgin. I didn't mean to imply it would replace it.

]You should probably read Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for clarification, but I will point out some informations.

Jabber is a decentralised, just as smtp, which means joe@gmail.com talk can talk, chat, transfer files with marry@gmx.de, jeff@jabber.org, pete@jabber.cc or/and john@web.de.

Hell, you could even talk to someone using his own pc as a jabber server bob@mypc.dyndns.org / bob@ip:port.

if one server breaks down, it doesnt have effects on the other servers, they are still able to communicate with each other, just like the smtp protocol used for sending emails.

At least here in Germany all major email providers offer you a jabber account. getting the emailadress marry@gmx.de will get you the jabber account marry@gmx.de for example.

The only US/International provider who does the same in Google, as their google talk service uses jabber which enables you to talk with other jabber users using different servers, like jabber.org for instance.
I'm not really familiar with the landscape of US-Email providers, so I'm not sure who offers jabber accounts.

But don't think you need to create an email account to get a jabber account. accounts @jabber.org for instance are only jabber accounts without any email service.

the chatroom you posted is another thing this protocol is able to do very well, MUCs (multi user chats).

You can easily create chatrooms on many servers which you can make persistent, different access levels like on irc, owner, admin, moderator, member, visitor etc.


And the best part, and the reason why I encourage people to use it is because it is an open standard. It's well documented and every who cares can look what it does and how it works. closed, proprietary protocols (yahoo! msn icq aim), well they are closed.

Another reason might be the terms of use of those im-service providers: