Truly an incredible update. I've been following matrix for years now, and since the beginning the technology (and company behind it) has never ceased to amaze me. In my opinion, Matrix is going to...
Truly an incredible update. I've been following matrix for years now, and since the beginning the technology (and company behind it) has never ceased to amaze me.
In my opinion, Matrix is going to be reaching a turning point soon. They may already be in the middle of it, with major deployments in Europe. They've already nailed down the most crucial components of a major chat platform:
Default E2EE
FOSS
Federated
Self-hostable
A gorgeous client that's a pleasure to use
A user base
and in the pipe there's even more crucial features coming soon
Social logins
Battle-tested massive scalability
An easy to deploy, low resource server (Dendrite / docker)
As such, I predict in 2021 more and more businesses will switch from using expensive, bloated, or proprietary solutions like MS teams and Slack, and switch to Matrix. Especially as the element client continues to improve, which, all else considered, is probably the single most important aspect to nail. The train has left the station, and I really have no idea how competitors like Slack and Teams will convince people to stay on their platform when their competitor steamrolls them on freedom, features, privacy, UX, price, and data sovereignty.
IMO, their biggest challenge, and one that major competitors like Slack and Teams have failed on or simply don't target, will be increasing personal usage. Matrix has a moderate amount of success with technical communities, but I would really love to see non-technical communities and users pop up more. Discord has really nailed this market, but I think with the right combination of features (social / anonymous login, screen sharing, user activity sharing, communities / spaces) they could also take over this market. The good news: The spec is ready for all of this and more.
Hmm, I think there's definitely a lot of room for improvement on the ease-of-use side but even still, it's pretty much comparable (in my eyes) to Slack. I wonder what the missing "elements" are...
Hmm, I think there's definitely a lot of room for improvement on the ease-of-use side but even still, it's pretty much comparable (in my eyes) to Slack. I wonder what the missing "elements" are from Element to make it awesome to use for non-technical users.
I was speaking specifically to ease-of-use, interface wise I'd say Element is much closer to Discord than any other major platform. Maybe a pointless exercise, but if I had to rank major chat...
I was speaking specifically to ease-of-use, interface wise I'd say Element is much closer to Discord than any other major platform. Maybe a pointless exercise, but if I had to rank major chat platform's UX on ease-of-use and polish it'd be this:
Ease-of-use:
Discord
Slack
Element
Teams (I use it for work, I hate it, my coworkers hate it.)
Polish:
Slack / Discord
Teams
Element
I'm pretty harsh on my beloved Element, but it's made such giant strides lately I can't help but imagine it'll be in the #1/2 spots in my mind this coming year. Besides, the world could use more optimism :)
Interesting, I personally think the Element client is one of the Matrix ecosystem's biggest weaknesses. Maybe my feelings will change with spaces-related UI overhauls, but there's also a lot of...
A gorgeous client that's a pleasure to use
Interesting, I personally think the Element client is one of the Matrix ecosystem's biggest weaknesses. Maybe my feelings will change with spaces-related UI overhauls, but there's also a lot of small stuff - especially on the desktop client - that just feels clunky, unintuitive, or off. Regardless, I'm in agreement that Matrix's only just starting to hit its stride, and the developers are only making it (and Element) better.
The Android and iOS apps are fantastic, though. Perks of writing a client for a single platform.
Agree. I'm running a private host for friends & family. I am enthusiastic and "tech-ie" enough that I find/figure out how to do everything I want in the client apps, but most friends/family have...
Agree. I'm running a private host for friends & family. I am enthusiastic and "tech-ie" enough that I find/figure out how to do everything I want in the client apps, but most friends/family have trouble learning how to use them. IDK what, exactly, the issue is (possibly as simple as "but it's not Messenger!"), but yeah, there seems to be something broadly unintuitive in the client designs.
Eg: Sometimes old/unsent messages or other "hiccups" get stuck in the client app. There is a button to clear out old cache, effectively a "have you tried rebooting it" button ... but it's buried at the bottom of the "Help & About" screen. I have never seen any app ever put anything functionally useful on their Help/About pages.
Truly an incredible update. I've been following matrix for years now, and since the beginning the technology (and company behind it) has never ceased to amaze me.
In my opinion, Matrix is going to be reaching a turning point soon. They may already be in the middle of it, with major deployments in Europe. They've already nailed down the most crucial components of a major chat platform:
and in the pipe there's even more crucial features coming soon
As such, I predict in 2021 more and more businesses will switch from using expensive, bloated, or proprietary solutions like MS teams and Slack, and switch to Matrix. Especially as the element client continues to improve, which, all else considered, is probably the single most important aspect to nail. The train has left the station, and I really have no idea how competitors like Slack and Teams will convince people to stay on their platform when their competitor steamrolls them on freedom, features, privacy, UX, price, and data sovereignty.
IMO, their biggest challenge, and one that major competitors like Slack and Teams have failed on or simply don't target, will be increasing personal usage. Matrix has a moderate amount of success with technical communities, but I would really love to see non-technical communities and users pop up more. Discord has really nailed this market, but I think with the right combination of features (social / anonymous login, screen sharing, user activity sharing, communities / spaces) they could also take over this market. The good news: The spec is ready for all of this and more.
Hmm, I think there's definitely a lot of room for improvement on the ease-of-use side but even still, it's pretty much comparable (in my eyes) to Slack. I wonder what the missing "elements" are from Element to make it awesome to use for non-technical users.
I was speaking specifically to ease-of-use, interface wise I'd say Element is much closer to Discord than any other major platform. Maybe a pointless exercise, but if I had to rank major chat platform's UX on ease-of-use and polish it'd be this:
Ease-of-use:
Polish:
I'm pretty harsh on my beloved Element, but it's made such giant strides lately I can't help but imagine it'll be in the #1/2 spots in my mind this coming year. Besides, the world could use more optimism :)
Interesting, I personally think the Element client is one of the Matrix ecosystem's biggest weaknesses. Maybe my feelings will change with spaces-related UI overhauls, but there's also a lot of small stuff - especially on the desktop client - that just feels clunky, unintuitive, or off. Regardless, I'm in agreement that Matrix's only just starting to hit its stride, and the developers are only making it (and Element) better.
The Android and iOS apps are fantastic, though. Perks of writing a client for a single platform.
Agree. I'm running a private host for friends & family. I am enthusiastic and "tech-ie" enough that I find/figure out how to do everything I want in the client apps, but most friends/family have trouble learning how to use them. IDK what, exactly, the issue is (possibly as simple as "but it's not Messenger!"), but yeah, there seems to be something broadly unintuitive in the client designs.
Eg: Sometimes old/unsent messages or other "hiccups" get stuck in the client app. There is a button to clear out old cache, effectively a "have you tried rebooting it" button ... but it's buried at the bottom of the "Help & About" screen. I have never seen any app ever put anything functionally useful on their Help/About pages.