AOL Adopting Jabber (XMPP)

sander writes to tell us that AOL seems to have decided to make their AIM and ICQ services compatible with XMPP. A test server is up at xmpp.oscar.aol.com, and while it's still buggy most major Jabber clients seem to work.

Address format?

[Midnight Thunder (17205)]

Does anyone know what address you would use to chat to a friend who has an ICQ or AIM account? [e-mail] and [e-mail] sound reasonable, but anything a bit more concrete would be good.

Re:Address format?

[stu42j (304634)]

From the screen shots, it looks like: [e-mail] and [e-mail]

Re:Address format?

[Tibor the Hun (143056)]

Man, I have to feel sorry for [e-mail].
I've been using that account for various spammy registrations since 1998.

3 cheers for Bob!

Re:

[jandrese (485)]

I really hope nobody actually has the email address [e-mail], if so I'm very sorry for getting you on all sorts of spam lists over the years.

Re:

[momerath2003 (606823)]

Use example.com [example.com]. That way you know you're not hurting anyone!

Re:

[swimin (828756)]

I believe they haven't actually set up Server-to-Server connections yet, so this won't work yet. You have to use your own aol account to login to their server.

makes sense to me

[orclevegam (940336)]

This seems like a reasonable move. It's not like sticking with their old protocol got them anything. They get more kudos and better interoperability with other networks by switching to a open protocol.

Great!

[HerculesMO (693085)]

Now can I have my 6 digit UIN back, after you lost my damn account?

Very Newsworthy

[Stubtify (610318)]

Well at least for those of us who've been around long enough to remember how badly AOL fought against opening up their services. The cat and mouse games of the early 2000s with a workaround being discovered and AOL closing it are long gone at this point. It is also interesting because the internet is now starting to move into an open direction. I can remember when AOL users and AIM users could not see each other. This was done to entice people to pay for AOL service. Slowly this eroded, and AIM was able to access AOL screennames. AOL always saw its chat base as it's main way to rake people into its service. With the actual AOL business model of old all but effectively dead (I say that, but I know there are millions who still cough up for a service that is free) they had no incentive to keep things closed.

Re:

[samkass (174571)]

Wasn't AOL/AIM also listed as one of the backers of the OpenID standard as well? So you can log into AIM using an open standard, then converse using an open standard. They now seem to be at least as open as Google about it all.

Yes, the AIM of old was very proprietary, but it seems to be "getting it" these days.

Re:

[risk one (1013529)]

Maybe they should start distributing a rebranded version of Pidgin as their client. Sort of complete the circle.

Re:Very Newsworthy

[mhall119 (1035984)]

Maybe they should start distributing a rebranded version of Pidgin as their client. Sort of complete the circle.

They can call it Gaim.

Pidgin?

[Aladrin (926209)]

I was trying to get this to work with Pidgin and my AIM account earlier today but never managed to. Has anyone made it work, or would you list the settings for it?

Thanks

Re:

[RedHat Rocky (94208)]

I got it working in pidgin, just the usual values you would expect.

It did take a while (minutes) to connect and prompt for password though, I suspect it's being hit pretty hard.

Closed Network no more

[PineHall (206441)]

This is big and is part of a trend. Open standards are replacing proprietary protocols. Companies are starting to see the advantage of being open and not closed. I am happy to see this.

Re:

[Sancho (17056)]

There are usually some pretty good advantages to using open standard when creating your product--aside from interoperability (which lots of people think is overrated), you also get to avoid re-inventing the wheel.

Since AOL came up with their instant messaging protocol long before Jabber, it seems like the advantages are much fewer for AOL. In fact, justifying such a move to the board or to the shareholders would probably be more difficult than if they had been able to use open protocols in the first place.

AOL's passive aggressive attention to IM

[ihatethetv (935399)]

I was introduced to IM through ICQ back before AIM existed. I remember Aim being ok, but ICQ was much better...well naturally AOL bought mirabilis for 300M-odd dollars way back when and then did the "standard operating procedure" (see the story of Netscape, Nullsoft, et al) of just letting it fester without updates while they pushed their product.

AIM was pretty much the only game in town after that for me...I had my people on AIM, and didn't see any reason to move to yahoo, let alone Msn.

Then everything seemed to stay the same for liek 5 years. The only thing AOL really seemed to be working on was adding loud video ads and fighting against the people who tried to make their crap usable -- like deadaim and it's ilk, gaim, etc.

Over the past seemingly decade, there was talk of cross-network integration...a la msn meets aim, etc. As far as I got was logging into multiple networks in gaim--which is NOT what I was hoping for.

Then google finally put out google talk, a great implementation. Easy enough for my parents to use, no ads....less spyware concern because google doesn't have an evil time warner overlord. And there's a web version of gtalk which beats the PANTs off of the aol crapfest they've called aim express. That's good for those who run different OSes or who don't want to be committed to installing software locally. To their credit aol did put out some token linux release, which i appreciated.

Call me old school but I like the TSR windows client. I don't want my IMs getting lost in browser tabs...I wish they'd port it to linux.

Anyway I read todays news as AOL is losing customers, so they're finally getting their protocol straight and using a standard.

Anyway, Google. PLEASE, please please grab AOl off of time warner...they've been dying to get rid of it, although they're too proud to admit it. Take their user base and merge it with yours. Get rid of their crap....get the media company bias out of their products...I'll take google's signature embedded ads over just about anything that's ever come out of AOL

While you're at it, take nullsoft too...and release all the source code....it might be best to release the code from before the AOL merger, btw.

Re:

[LWATCDR (28044)]

I had ICQ but I never really got into the IM thing. I used and still do use IRC. Now I do use Gtalk but I just wish they had a version for my cell phone :)

Re:

[PCM2 (4486)]

As far as I got was logging into multiple networks in gaim--which is NOT what I was hoping for.

Why? I mean ... isn't that all you need? Or do people do things with IM that I don't do?

It's about time

[Quiet_Desperation (858215)]

AOL *users* have been jabbering for years now.

great news

[hey (83763)]

This is great news. Hopefully it will shame the others to switch to XMPP. Yes, I mean you MSN.

Re:

[JordanL (886154)]

If AOL moving to XMPP is hell freezing over... MSN moving to XMPP would be putting hell in an Einstein-Boseman state.

I other words, not bloody likely.

Client only, or S2S as well?

[TFoo (678732)]

the real question is -- are they going to support XMPP S2S (server to server federation)? Currently it looks like port xmpp.oscar.aol.com:5269 is NOT accepting connections (that's the XMPP S2S port).

Without S2S, this announcement is pretty much useless -- I mean, sure I can use my jabber client against AOL instead of the AOL-branded one, but I pretty much can do that already via the reverse-engineered joscar libraries (e.g. libgaim)

Re:

[koko775 (617640)]

Perhaps as a part of their rollout they eventually plan on turning on S2S. If I recall, wasn't gTalk closed for a few months until they opened S2S?

Re:Client only, or S2S as well?

[rabbit994 (686936)]

Yes, GTalk was closed for a few months and then they opened it up for S2S. In Fact, I talk to all my friends on GTALK via S2S from personal XMPP (Jabber) server.

They are not even publishing the correct DNS SRV records yet for AOL.

> _jabber._tcp.aol.com

*** dnsserver can't find _jabber._tcp.aol.com: Non-existent domain
> _xmpp-client._tcp.aol.com

*** dnsserver can't find _xmpp-client._tcp.aol.com: Non-existent domain
> _xmpp-server._tcp.aol.com

*** dnsserver can't find _xmpp-server._tcp.aol.com: Non-existent domain

Huzzah

[Realistic_Dragon (655151)]

Finally I will only need to be connected to one IM network. _My own_. Up to now you had to pretty much put up with either MSN logging your conversations or AOL logging them.

One of the great things about Google turning on server 2 server for GTalk is that it is now possible to run your own IM server (as you might run your own mail server) and network interconnection just works. If AOL go the same way a critical mass might build up enough that central control of IM becomes almost impossible - as all the geeks

Re:Huzzah

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

Finally I will only need to be connected to one IM network. _My own_. Up to now you had to pretty much put up with either MSN logging your conversations or AOL logging them.

One of the great things about Google turning on server 2 server for GTalk is that it is now possible to run your own IM server (as you might run your own mail server) and network interconnection just works.

And then you still have AOL, MSN, or Google logging your chats, if you're talking to someone on one of their networks. If you're the only person using your chat server, it's really like just using a very complicated client program.

E.g., if you're "[e-mail]" and you run a XMPP server at messaging.homenetwork.net, but all the people you talk to are on Google or AOL, every message you send goes from your client, through messaging.homenetwork.net, and then over to Google's or AOL's servers (where presumably they log them), before going to the destination.

Unless you can convince your friends to use your chat server (messaging.homenetwork.net) rather than AOL's/Google's, you're not getting any additional privacy.

Frankly, I think privacy isn't really the goal we should be aiming for with this. If you want privacy, get OTR encryption (the easiest way is just to use Adium on the Mac), and then it doesn't matter quite so much whose servers the messages are passing through. The switch from OSCAR to XMPP is all about interoperability.

Universal SPIM for everyone!

[IGnatius T Foobar (4328)]

It's great that AOL is finally going to speak the industry-standard XMPP. Now instant messaging will be as universal as email is today. And you know what that means...

If you have a Jabber account anywhere, be prepared to start receiving lots of spim [wikipedia.org] all day, every day. And don't simply think that you'll get away with not allowing buddies on your list without accepting an invitation. Spimmers don't do business that way. They simply put their advertisement in the invitation so you've already read it by the time you decline the invite.

Viagra ads, mortgage scams, pump and dump stocks ... all day, every day, but now it pops up right into the middle of your screen. Happy Happy!!

Re:

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

They will have to be realtime now, though.

That is -- I use a statistical filter, and I don't much care how long it takes to run, as emails are intermittent, and don't have to be delivered instantly. It's still pretty damned fast, especially for small messages...

But consider things like SPF, greylisting, and all kinds of other tricks people use for mail filtering. There are a LOT of email spam filters out there right now which simply could not work well on Jabber.

Old TopCoder Project

[cparker15 (779546)]

This is most likely the result of the AOL XMPP Gateway project posted in 2006 at TopCoder: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=Static&d1=dev&d2=assembly&d3=det_aolXmppGateway [topcoder.com]

XMPP's features, what am I missing?

[bconway (63464)]

I've been using AIM since 1997 and GTalk on and off for a year, both with Pidgin 2.3.1 currently.

As far as comparisons go, with AIM I can:
- See and show other's and my own idle time (critical to me)
- See other's and set my buddy profile (very useful for links and other interesting tidbits)
- See people's login time (important)
- See people's account creation time
- See the capabilities of someone's client

With XMPP I can:
- Do none of the above
- Have a slightly larger buddy icon

Am I missing something? Are these lackings limitations of Pidgin? Given XMPP's open nature, I would have imagined missing features would have been implemented long before reverse-engineering AIM's newest protocol features. :confused:

Re:GTalk Compatability

[stu42j (304634)]

AIM support in GMail Chat (not the GTalk client) still uses the standard AIM protocol, not XMPP. In order to use it, you must have an AIM account. If AOL eventually fully support XMPP what that will mean is that you can use your XMPP account to chat with AIM users directly without having an AIM account yourself.

Re:GTalk Compatability

[ajs (35943)]

And as such, this is a clear admission that Google Talk was putting a serious dent in their business. They had no interest in standards until they had competition, but now that they do, they'll certainly want to make sure that their competition isn't the only one that can claim universal access (which is exactly what Google can claim now for their Web-based client).

Re:

[Sancho (17056)]

I'd be pretty surprised if Google Talk was putting a dent in their business. It's probably one of the other big-three--Yahoo! Instant Messanger, and MSN Messenger. By moving to XMPP, AOL can effectively increase their userbase to include anyone also using XMPP (since they can now communicate with AOL's subscribers.) It's Yet Another Reason to use AOL instead of Y!IM or MSN.

Re:

[phobos13013 (813040)]

Well, GTalk or Gmail extension what have you, use the OpenAim [slashdot.org] standard of course not the original AIM protocol. So my point really is that AOL's progression in this realm at least has been going in this direction. This blog [coccinella.im] seems to argue against the positive nature of AIM moving to Gmail, but I think the comments point out that long-term it should be positive, especially since one of the suggestions of the article are now implemented! I think bottom line is AOL knew that OSCAR was dead and rather develo

Re:

[endx7 (706884)]

No, this is different, since before you could only go through google and it was limited to google. For example, any @jabber.org account should be able to talk to an aim or icq @aol.com account now.

I'm not sure how far the compatibility extends however, since my aim account connected traditionally can't seem to talk to my normal non-aim xmpp account.

Re:

[Ecks (52930)]

It appears that they haven't implemented server-to-server connections yet so that's not the case now. However all they have to do is throw the switch so to speak. It would be a wonderful thing if AIM migrated fully to xmpp.

-- Ecks

Re:

[marcansoft (727665)]

For S2S to work, they would have to add a SRV record to aol.com so other servers can find the XMPP server responsible for @aol.com addresses (this works just like MX for e-mail, but more general). I doubt they will do that until their server is a little more mature.

Try it:
$ dig SRV _xmpp-server._tcp.aol.com

Re:

[muuh-gnu (894733)]

No, this actually _is_ Jabber, while Googles AIM access isnt. Google just provides a client you can use to access AIM, but using AOL's oscar protocol. You cant use Google's AIM access with a client you choose, but here you can. The difference is that with google's approach of jsut implementing the (now old) oscar protocol, you will always have to have an actual AIM account to communicate with other AIM users. With AOL now using jabber, there is hope that they will open their servers for server2server commun

Re:

[Poromenos1 (830658)]

You might think their world is "little", but in my country (Greece) and I'm sure in most of Europe, everyone uses MSN almost exclusively. Noone has ever heard of AIM/Y, and only old timers remember ICQ. If you want to get a taste of what this news is like for me (apart from the obvious theoretical benefit of using an open protocol), replace the word AOL/AIM with the word MSN, to you it'd be non-news.

Re:

[SCHecklerX (229973)]

But just imagine how much better tuned, and how much more quickly interface bugs could be fixed if the pidgin guys could focus on just one protocol vs. a dozen. That's a good thing, IMO, even though I use pidgin for AIM as well.

Then again, everyone could have just stuck with IRC. Oh well.

Re:

[dfn_deux (535506)]

A multiprotocol client will always be a kludge, some are slightly more elegant than others, but a kludge none the less.
That said, changing protocols on their end doesn't really buy anything for anyone, unless they also support jabbers network interoperability. I.E. an aim user should be able to message directly to a google chat user without both users requiring an account on the others' service.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

With cross network clients like this readily available....moving their network is(was?) a completely unneeded IT expense.

No, maintaining their proprietary protocol is a completely unneeded IT expense. Now they have the power of the XMPP community behind them.

There is a lot with AIM. File transfers don't work reliably behind firewalls. There's no voice and video support. Its client is archaic. In short, their legacy of being a dial-up information provider instead of an Internet Service Provider was weig

Re:

[edwdig (47888)]

No, maintaining their proprietary protocol is a completely unneeded IT expense. Now they have the power of the XMPP community behind them.

You're assuming that the XMPP community's desires correspond with AOL's desires. That's a pretty big assumption. Even if they do correspond, AOL is still going to have deadlines on when they need things implemented, which the community isn't going to care about.

And don't forget, AIM is a mature product. It's not like they need to do massive development on it.

There is a lo

Re:

[Locklin (1074657)]

maybe they don't want to maintain the old protocol forever?

XMPP has well maintained, free, server software, and has the added benefit of things like jingle (voice), and a rather large user base (GTalk & Jabber). Considering all they want is for users to use their services, this should simultaneously lower their overhead and increase the value of their services.

This is yet another positive sign that arbitrary incompatibility is giving way to the (old) concept of open standards for communication on the in

Re:

[Ecks (52930)]

Maintaining the old protocol costs them users. I want to be on the chat server/protocol with all my friends. If AOL is the biggest then that's where I want to be. I imagine that Google talk/xmpp is growing faster than AOL now so it's a logical move.

Hail to AOL for this move. Hopefully I can turn off my xmpp aol transport in a year or so.

-- Ecks

Re:but......why?

[mhall119 (1035984)]

I've currently got pidgin running and its talking to people over AIM...its talking to people on MSN...and its talking back into my corporate jabber network over the VPN...

Yes, but you have to have an account for each and every one of those. You also can't hold a group session between your AIM friends, your MSN friends, and your co-workers, can you?

XMPP would allow you to have a jabber account on your corporate network, and talk to somebody on AIM, ICQ, or another company's japper network, without having to have accounts on those servers. Think of it like email, you have [e-mail], and I have [e-mail], but you can send me an email without signing up with myisp.com. Well now we get the same flexibility with IM. The only thing I see missing is an MX-like DNS record for IM servers.

Re:

[premchai21 (458138)]

There is such a record in the case of Jabber; it uses the SRV record type. For instance:

$ host -t SRV _xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server1.l.google.com
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server2.l.google.com
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server3.l.google.com
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com SRV 20 0 5269 xmpp-server4.l.google.com
_xmpp-server._tcp.gmail.com SRV 5 0 5269 xmpp-server.l.google.com
$ host -t

Re:Pundits, please speak up

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

It means that [e-mail] (seriously, who uses it anymore?) can now IM to [e-mail], and vice versa.

A longer explanation: IM has, historically, been a walled garden [wikipedia.org]. That is, if you have MSN Messenger (or "Windows Messenger"), I need to have MSN Messenger in order to IM you. If I have Yahoo Messenger, we can't communicate.

There are ways around this, none of them very good. You could just install Yahoo Messenger also, and AIM, and that will cover almost everyone. (Almost -- there's still Gadu-Gadu, WinPopup, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC...)

IRC is a bit better, actually, because at least there's a standard protocol. Anyone can setup an IRC server, or write their own IRC client. If you're on Windows, you can just download mIRC and connect to anyone. (I like irssi on Linux and MacIRSSI on OS X.) But it's still a walled garden, in that you can't connect to EFnet and talk to people -- in rooms or in private messages -- who are on DALnet. (Or Freenode, or...)

But not everything is a walled garden. Email, for instance -- anyone can register a domain, setup a mailserver, and provide email for themselves, for friends, or for money. If you're a poor sap who has an @aol.com email address, I don't have to do anything special to be able to send mail to you from my @gmail.com address, or from my own domain.

All it takes for email to work is a domain name and a mailserver. And a mailserver can be any computer that's online all the time. Not that I recommend doing it yourself, just saying that email is wholly and completely democratized.

Well, that's what Jabber/XMPP is all about. Not only is the chat/IM protocol open, but Jabber servers can be configured to talk to other Jabber servers -- to arbitrarily connect to each other. So you can be on AOL Instant Messenger, and I can be on Google Talk, but we can add each other to our buddy lists and communicate. Not because there's any kind of big deal with AOL and Google, but because they both speak Jabber. And like email, I can setup my own Jabber server.

Re:What about Jingle?

[BitZtream (692029)]

From the web page:

Jingle is an extension to the Jabber/XMPP protocol, to allow for peer-to-peer (p2p) signalling for multimedia interactions such as voice or video. It was designed by Google and the XMPP Standards Foundation. The multimedia content itself can be delivered using the Real-time Transport Protocol, with Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) for NAT traversal. As of January 26 2007, the Jingle standards are marked as being experimental, meaning that it has not yet been approved by the XMPP Standards Foundation.

... what that means is ... it is the standard for voice of XMPP is just not 100% locked in stone yet.