The development of interoperable standards for all IP based communication – from messaging apps like WhatsApp to Facebook Messenger, FaceTime and more. As an open source initiative, Matrix.org is now calling on the community of developers, admins and hackers to see what can be done with this standard.
There is a near-limitless pool of potential for totally integrated IP-communication and this initiative will be behind some truly disruptive technologies in the months to come.
Matrix.org’s goal is to make real-time communication over IP as seamless and interoperable as email. Today Matrix.org reveals its first steps in providing the world with open, distributed, real time communications tools.
Today’s VoIP and IM communications are fragmented. We all juggle multiple apps and profiles to chat, call or video message. We have an illusion of control because of the plethora of apps available, but in reality we are forced to jump from island to island, hoping to find our friends there, leaving our fragmented conversations and data scattered across a wide range of incompatible providers.
Matrix is a new open standard developed to break the status-quo and allow communication services themselves to interoperate. The end goal is that consumers will be able to choose to use their favourite app from their trusted app provider and still be able to communicate with friends using competing apps and services.
Amandine Le Pape (Business lead) said,
“For consumers our aim is to make VoIP and instant messaging as flexible and ubiquitous as email. Users should be free to communicate with their friends on a service of their choosing.â€Â
The standard has been designed to be light-weight, pragmatic, fully distributed, federated and interoperable, and any individual or organization can set up their own Matrix server to manage their own communications, as with email. Developers will be able to easily create and host their own real-time communication functionality, or add such features to an existing service whilst building on the Matrix community of users. Alternatively existing communication services can also easily integrate into the Matrix ecosystem.
Matthew Hodgson (Technical lead) said:
“From today anyone can run their own Matrix server and clients, and developers can use the client API to add IM and VoIP to new or existing apps and access the wider Matrix ecosystem. It’s early days, but we’re really excited to see what people build as Matrix matures.â€Â
Matrix.org’s initial inspiration and goal has been to fix the problem of fragmented IP communications. But Matrix’s real potential and ultimate mission is to be a new and truly open ecosystem on the Internet enabling services, devices and people to easily communicate with each other.
Matrix.org is an open initiative and will be run as a nonprofit. All the code has been and will continue to be, open source. Anyone can go to Github (http://github.com/matrix-org) now and try out the examples and API.[signoff predefined=”Enjoy this?” icon=”icon-users”][/signoff]
