XMPP is nice, but I have never see regular folks use it. Only tech peoples.
The fact that you can't "install and go" is killing decentralized solution because when you ask regular folks the "server url" (or even to choose on a server list), they give up because it's too complicated already.
It's already HARD enough to get them on Signal because they can't just click on the "Connect with Facebook" button.
I got my mom on Signal and she actually converted other people to use it because it was not much harder than Whatsapp to set up.
XMPP nerver killed MSN back in the day's for the same reason...
Support for creating invitations from within the app was recently added to Conversations (sponsored by the Snikket project). I'm hoping to see more servers deploy this functionality in the coming year, and more clients implement support.
Snikket is built around the idea of invite-first for onboarding onto self-hosted servers. As the dev I may be biased, but I've onboarded many people seamlessly this way.
Quicksy is the onboarding app we need for XMPP but until we have a perfect like for like Quicksy also available on iOS (like Element has) I can't in good conscience recommend my social circles join.
That's the cool thing with Threema. If you verifyed the contact is so prominent, everybody want to verify each others key, even people who don't understand the concept. In Threema it is not hidden somewhere, it's just allways visible on each single contact with green or red dots.
Sounds similar to Element.
However, Threema does not yet have the problem of having to deal with verification with multiple devices, (which is what I was aiming at)
"TLDR: Automatically trust all new devices of contacts that haven’t been verified before, and prompt for manual confirmation each time a verified contact adds a new device."
A few years ago, many regular folks were probably using it without even realizing it: Google Talk and AIM both had XMPP support and thanks to that, communication between the two platforms was possible.
It's already HARD enough to get them on Signal because they can't just click on the "Connect with Facebook" button. I got my mom on Signal and she actually converted other people to use it because it was not much harder than Whatsapp to set up.
XMPP nerver killed MSN back in the day's for the same reason...