Presence and real-time messaging are core themes of applications and services in unified communications and collaboration. In these user-centric worlds, applications, users, and devices must share presence, messages, and data. There is not (nor will there be) a single communications protocol that spans this diverse and growing universe of communications endpoints.

Based on the activity in our pipeline and the OEM deals we’ve signed (click for a recent example) Jabber is becoming the de facto standard for presence-enabling existing services and applications. Jabber easily bridges legacy and standard protocols to aggregate presence with speed, scale, and security. Jabber, Inc.’s technology is multi-protocol now, and it has the flexibility to extend to future protocols as they become established.

It’s still king says Dow Jones’ Paul Vigna in a recent WSJ OpEd piece (subscription req.)

We had a somewhat different perspective in SIP Magazine last year under the header Context is King.

We don’t so much disagree as believe that the dominant position lies in the software that separates people from the content they want.

Case in point, iTunes sales are rising even as the content they’re selling has remained somewhat static.

On perhaps a parallel tangent, Om isn’t far off in suggesting that IM is the “last desktop app standing.” But I’d argue its more than that, as instant messaging IS the desktop. Or more accurately, the interface through which we manage our presence defines our desktop and at this point it is IM, and (hypothesizing here) the company you entrust to help you manage your presence owns the most consumer trust (and attention).

Of interest to eggheads in recent news is the fact that both Google and Joost use XMPP. I would expect YouTube to integrate a chat function at some point. Joost apparently has one such that you can open a chat and perhaps a group chat around a specific video. Pretty cool community building tool.

But beyond IM and chat, I think Google and Joost recognize that there’s tremendous power in presence-enabling their IPTV platforms. The more of a person’s presence IPTV platforms can consume the more targeted (and lucrative) their advertising slots become.