A serious question has been rattling through my mind lately. Which messaging protocol is better: #matrix or #xmpp. And by better I mean more mature and user-friendly. Also, where can I find more people? 
#askfediverse #askmastodon
@michal To me XMPP is a sad tale of been thrown under the bus by Big Tech Companies that is revolting.
Matrix is promising alternative in this Discord-like era.
Still growing and flexible for new trends in IM.
@mcevnon I was afraid someone might say something along these lines about XMPP. I guess I won't bother with it then. And yeah, Matrix does seem to be very promising 
@michal As a someone who always took XMPP's side like in a days of Jabber vs Gadu Gadu skirmish.
Its a bitter truth IMHO.
Saying that I hope Matrix furthers better that XMPP ever did.
By “more mature” XMPP wins easily: it’s an IETF standard deployed internally by many big orgs. Just checkout the list at https://xmpp.org/uses/instant-messaging.html
As for user-friendliness this is orthogonal to the protocol as UX is usually the domain of client software. While Matrix definitely has a lot of investor money to get the UX polished for long term I'd be wary of the entire enterprise. It’s just a proprietary protocol and looking through New Vector’s shares (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10873661/filing-history) it seems the majority of the company is not in the hands of original developers.
XMPP in that regard is more like a bazaar of companies and individuals working together compared to Matrix cathedral style of development.
For the record I’m using both XMPP (via https://dino.im/ + https://conversations.im/) and Matrix (https://element.io/ via webapp + Android) for years and it’s definitely good to have them both running to have more choice.
Matrix guys also have some interesting ideas (emoji fingerprint verification, device cross signing) but I’m still not sure about the protocol design. My Matrix server operator explicitly warned me not to join big rooms as this will overload the server (it did sometimes).
XMPP servers on the other hand can be run in full productive mode for dozens of users even on Raspberry Pis but if you’ve got friends on iOS then XMPP is going to be a world of pain (e.g. getting full-e2e-encrypted group chats or proper notifications).
Well, it seems it’s really hard to get something perfect in this world 
@michal A lot could be said when comparing the protocols and implementations. Long story short, from a user(-friendliness) perspective, Matrix will currently make you more happy if you're looking for a Slack alternative, while XMPP is better at replacing WhatsApp (esp. Conversations/Quicksy on Android).
@holger yup, I definitely prefer the UI and UX of Element / Matrix. Still, it's not an easy choice.