Coming up with a good IM naming scheme is fabulous and way overdue IMHO. I think however that freezing the notion in place of multiple independent and incompatible standards run by independent organizations (which will with luck not be a permanent situation). I think a better way would be to slice up the namespace just the same way it is in the email world. That way there will be a congruence between most people's email and IM identities and the naming authority and technology behind each one can change over time as companies change technology, are bought and sold to one another, add and remove users, etc. This will probably require something like the email MX record scheme to figure out what is supposed to happen when I see joe@acme.com. Of course URLs need a type indicator up front, so something like:
im:byoder@aol.com or
im:byoder@aim.com or
im:byoder@jabber.com or
im:byoder@msnim.com or
im:byoder@earthlink.net (which would be resolved through a lookup indicating what protocols/systems EarthLink's IM domain uses)
If the determination of protocols, servers, etc. is not moved back up into the services (as opposed to in the names) then every time some provider gets bought, sold, or changes its technology, everyone's names/URL will change and that's far from ideal.
Does anyone remember email addresses before they had at-signs in them? It worked but it was messy and constantly broken. Let's skip that phase in the IM world, OK?
