Sam Ruby includes Jabber in his recent long bets for the five technologies that will be especially influential over the next five to ten years. Tim Bray concurs. Sam further explains:
Jabber
I didn’t get much pushback here, but I’m finding that as I implement more active databases, I’m finding a need for application initiated paging / text messsaging / IM capabilities. These capabilities need to be able traverse firewalls and NAT devices, and work with IM clients and cell phones.
All of these requirements point me in the direction of Google Talk.
Additionally, just like the web encompasses both the human web and programmable web, we need a messaging infrastructure that is not only human friendly but also bot friendly. In this area Jabber doesn’t disappoint.
Naturally those in the know realize that Google Talk is built on Jabber technologies, i.e., the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. Google was smart to choose XMPP as the basis for its Talk service 2 years ago, and more smart companies are implementing and deploying XMPP technologies all the time.
Yes, the Jabber juggernaut rolls on...
UPDATE: There's an interesting follow-up conversation happening about pulling feeds via HTTP or pushing feeds via XMPP (or a little bit of both). Check out the posts from Bill de Hóra, Mike Herrick, Dan Creswell, and Patrick Logan for details. And see Elias Torres on Hadoop and Jabber, too.