Yeah, I agree. If I remember XMPP was dropped while using that old adage of "scale", which maybe was real, but in the end the net effect is the same. Advanced users know a broader breadth of the internet while most internet users only know the depth of Facebook and other various platforms.
I guess once they got big enough there was no longer a point in interoperability, it seems like a pretty big phase transition got hit about a decade ago where suddenly each walled garden got big and valuable enough that isolation was a better strategy for them.
It just sucks for the internet. I don't think, if those companies ceased to exist, that they would automatically get recreated because of some inevitable niche or market law. I think that they got where they are because of a fluke of the times they were created in -- people could not grasp how they make money.
