Messaging. Federated? Silo? Does it Matter with an API and Bots?

Nobody cares anymore.

It used to be important. Interoperability. Federation. Communication across networks, devices and vendors. All useless now. We've got our lowest common denominator: IP, HTTP - the web. We have our point of federation/aggregation - they now call it the home screen of a smartphone. People got all riled up on my blog last week something about Wire needing to federate - check the comments. My view? Federating wouldn't move an inch in their user's base needle. Today's openness and messaging is all about being the platform and enabling others to connect to you. How is that achieved? By way of APIs. And by this new stupid word - "Bots" - which most probably stands for automation. Why is Bots stupid? Because it just means using the API in a certain fashion. Back to Messaging.

Silo

If you have a service. What happens if it is a silo? You gain users to it. Slowly or faster. Doesn't matter that much (though it probably does to you). One day you want to add more utility to the service - some stickiness - making sure people don't leave. So you add features. But you understand at some point that going it alone won't move you fast enough, so you open it up to external developers and services. You publish an open API.

Federation

Federation you say? You make your service accessible to other networks by interacting with them using the same protocol? Great. But what does that give you exactly? Same set of features you have, give or take a feature or two. Same utility. No stickiness. No differentiation. Not enough. So you again wish to add features, but getting out of the core you've federated just places you in the position of proprietary features. And again you'll one day understand it isn't enough. Faster "innovation" and growth are required on that front - you can't cater all of your customers' needs. So you... open up! Slap an API on top of your service.

No one cares

Two alternatives. Same end result. Time to move on. Nothing here to see. Just make sure you have a solid infrastructure - and an API on top of it for others to integrate with.