It&#x27;s of course possible to simplify a chat protocol. For instance, I&#x27;m not sure why the XMPP designers decided to go with XML; it&#x27;s much more verbose than most formats, and typically slower and more complicated to parse in my experience say versus JSON.<p>What advantage did it have? Unless someone is sniffing unencrypted XMPP packets and finds that XML readability handy, I don&#x27;t really see the point. And that&#x27;s an edge case. Not to mention XML&#x27;s main advantage over many other formats is having hierarchical relationships--but how does that help in a chat protocol?<p>I&#x27;m sure someone could very well have counter points to the above, but those are the things off the top of my head that made me question why XML was the top choice here for an IM protocol.