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.

“Convergence does have some merits then-mainly in cutting costs and increasing efficiency-but the hype is wide of the mark. Its chief significance is that it heralds the advent of far more vigorous competition in the telecoms industry. It will be a bloody fight for the companies involved, but the ultimate victors will be their customers, who will benefit from greater choice and lower prices.”

Such is the opinion of The Economist in a special report on the future of telecoms [subscription required], which I thought flowed nicely with an early draft of some marketing copy we’ve been kicking around that is targeted to the same senior executives the writers chide.

Proposed text reads “The convergence of voice, video, text, data, along with fixed and mobile technologies represents a leap frog opportunity for some and a potential body blow to others.”

As The Economist goes on the argue, converting all content-regardless of origin or destination-into Internet Protocol (IP) technologies makes too much sense in cost and complexity terms alone for anyone to ignore it entirely.

The other side of that equation is that the macroeconomics of convergence wreaks havoc on existing business lines. Any basic service is easily commoditized and the consequences for traditional pricing models are predictable, severe, and ultimately unavoidable.

So, the people we want to reach with our message are in unenviable positions because they know the way forward likely involves the slaying of sacred [cash] cows. Yet they have big dreams. They envision the winners as the world’s most valuable brands because they manage customers’ attention—very personally—at the customer’s own request.

Right now, our best customers are the ones who either had no sacred cow to begin with or have already resigned themselves to its impending sacrifice on the altar of creative destruction. They are investing in architectures that support services that follow identities, not devices. These same services can publish and subscribe to an aggregated model of presence that allows information to seek people; reaching them only in the context they want it to find them.

Their vision is attainable, and I don’t think there is too much hype in what the end game looks like. However, the road to convergence nirvana will be paved with ideas that were before their time, brands that lived and died on the changing habits of just a few key connectors, and probably many others.

A constant that will run through every winner will be how their services interrelate, cooperate, and compete for our attention, which to Jabber, Inc. sounds a lot like what we already do.

It’s the tagline for Jabber, Inc., but what does it mean?

To extend the filaments/bulb theme: when the light is on, people and systems can see the context of other people, systems, and things more clearly.

Yes, but that doesn’t really answer the question…

The Power of Presence is the ability to control the dimmer switch, and choose where, when, and at what to shine the bulb. The power lies with individuals and systems; each exerting some control over what they see as well as what parts of them can be seen by others.

Separately, the many strands of presence offer variable luminosity, collectively they are powerful beacons influencing what information goes where, to whom, and when, why, and how it is consumed.

The value of search-driven advertising is the flicker of a distant candle in comparison to the power supplied from aggregated presence. Just taking myself for instance, many different entities have access to lots of pieces of my presence. My mobile carrier knows when I’m using that device and perhaps even my location, my satellite provider knows when and what I’m watching, my bank and credit card companies know what I buy and where, certain people and services know when I’m online, search companies know what I’m looking for at a given moment, and so on. But none of them sees the entire context, which includes who I’m with, precisely what I am doing or what I would rather be doing.

But, some already know more than others. From service providers to content producers to technology providers to organizational consumers of content, there is a race on to illuminate as much context as possible.

The drive by telcos to offer triple and quadruple-play services to consumers is at a very deep level about presence and context, and not simply about average revenue per user (ARPU).

If my quadruple-play vendor knows what I am watching, when I am watching it, and knows (because I told them) that I don’t want to be interrupted during that show, they can prevent most electronic interruptions (alas, they cannot control the person sitting next to me). Moreover, if they could aggregate - with my permission - things on my calendar, they could do really useful things, such as sending a coupon for “dinner, Saturday night.” But, and it’s a huge BUT, my service provider knows nothing of what kind of food I like, what neighborhoods I prefer, etc., not to mention those of my companion(s). Some of that information can be mined, the trick is in getting me to trust any one company with enough information so they can extrapolate and make recommendations without annoying me or otherwise violating the trust I have granted them.

In the more controlled environments of an enterprise, using presence to route information in the right context is already an achievable end. But is it possible in the consumer space (i.e., do you think you could trust any one company that much)? We can envision scenarios where clearinghouses and other trusted third parties broker information exchanges of a highly personal nature that are to the mutual benefit of individual content consumers and producers. What do you foresee?

Filament(n) [http://www.answers.com/filament]: Thin thread of carbon or tungsten which produces heat or light with the passage of current.

The universal symbol for the Jabber protocol is a light bulb. Jabber.org and Jabber, Inc. use stylized versions of a light bulb as logos and as icons to represent presence. We’ve named this blog “Filaments” because we will be discussing topics at the core of presence.

This is the first entry of an open conversation about any and all of the many strands of individual and system presence. Check this space regularly for discussions on how presence is and can be embedded within applications, devices, and systems as thin strands of information that together weave a richer and more real-time experience.

Please join the discussion.