Hi everyone!

Welcome to the latest edition of your pseudo-monthly JMP update!

In case it’s been a while since you checked out JMP, here’s a refresher: JMP lets you send and receive text and picture messages (and calls) through a real phone number right from your computer, tablet, phone, or anything else that has a Jabber client.  Among other things, JMP has these features: Your phone number on every device; Multiple phone numbers, one app; Free as in Freedom; Share one number with multiple people.

This month our team launched a new product to help people looking to take even more control of their digital life by hosting their own social media instance.  Read about Togethr, what it is today, and a glimpse of our future plans.

JMP now supports SMS-only ports.  Landlines and most numbers with VoIP providers (but not numbers with most mobile carriers) are eligible to have JMP provide SMS/MMS messaging services for the number, while voice and other services would remain with the current carrier.  This feature is in Alpha, contact support if you are interested.

This month also saw the release of Cheogram Android 2.10.6-1.  This version merges in the latest upstream release of Conversations, as well as fixes for the contacts integration and playback for some media types (most notably 3GPP videos).

Finally, our integration with Snikket hosting is coming along.  For all of this year JMP customers have been able to get into the Snikket hosting beta with the promise of never having to pay for the JMP-using Jabber IDs they host there.  Now, JMP customers no longer need to contact Snikket staff to be put into the regular beta queue.  Contact JMP support and we can set you up with a Snikket instance directly.  We will continue to work on this integration until someday it becomes a fully self-serve part of signup.

To learn what’s happening with JMP between newsletters, here are some ways you can find out:

• The chatroom remains the heart of the community.  You can also join from your web browser or from Matrix.

• The blog, where you may be reading this. Can also be followed in a client like Movim.

• The Lemmy Community

• The Subreddit

• On Twitter

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful rest of your week!

Last week we launched a sister product from the same team that brings you JMP: Togethr.  Why are we launching a second product?  Why now?  What does this have to do with the mission of JMP in particular, or the Sopranica project in general?

Togethr is a managed hosting platform for small Fediverse instances.  It is powered by the ActivityPub protocol that powers Mastodon, PeerTube, and so many others.  While there are several social networking solutions that build on XMPP (just like JMP does), and indeed we use one for this blog, we chose to go with something else for Togethr.  Does that mean we don’t have hope for XMPP in the social space?  No, rather it is an admission that the largest network for people to interact with in this way exists on ActivityPub-compatible software, and people need a solution they can use today.

As it grows, Togethr gives us the “skin in the game” motivation to bridge these worlds.  We are not the only ones interested in bridging the XMPP and ActivityPub worlds together, in fact the Libervia project is currently working on a grant to produce a first version of a gateway, that should be generally usable later this year.  We hope to eventually roll out an update that makes every Togethr instance seamlessly be both ActivityPub and XMPP without anyone needing to change their address.

Why not wait until “everything is ready” to go live with XMPP and ActivityPub at the same time?  Well, people need a solution.  Many people fleeing silos or otherwise being attracted to federated social networking find that self-hosting is too complicated, or they just don’t have the time to dedicate to it.  Many of these people end up creating an account on a giant volunteer-run instance, joining yet another silo (albeit a nicely federated one) run by admins they don’t know with financial and mental pressures they cannot understand.

Togethr gives people looking to federate their digital social networking experience full control without requiring systems administration knowledge or time.  Our team not only keeps the instance running, but provides support for users who may not be familiar with the software or the fediverse in general and need help getting everything set up.  However, there is no lock-in and people can easily move to another host or self-hosting at any time.  For example, if someone got an instance example.party and created the user person they would have address person@example.party just like you would expect on any Fediverse instance.  However, since they control the domain they could move to a different host or self-host, point the domain at the new instance, copy over their data, and no one has to “follow me at my new address”, everything just keeps working.

While we believe that single-user instances are the pinnacle of federation, Togethr does not limit the way people want to use it.  People may have family or friends they want to share posts with, who might not be motivated to join the Fediverse but will accept a personal invitation.  So every Togethr instance allows the customer to invite whoever they would like to join them on the instance, in order to smooth the onboarding for friends and family.  We hope that this can provide an option for people looking to take control over more of their digital life.