Yeah good points, not everyone needs to host their own matrix.org home server; users can simply hop on existing ones. The one on matrix.org or vector.im are pretty robust and actually allows public registration (and you can have private rooms for privacy, etc.). Check out: http://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html or directly to https://vector.im

Also, I should have stated, I hosted my home server on a vps, but one can also totally just do it on your own server at home (so you could avoid paying any vps provider)...again, for those who have an interest in hosting their own.

Personally, my goal was to host the server for my family...but the really big advantage of decentralized platforms like matrix.org (and others like gnu social, etc.!) is that my host can connect with others...hey email has worked successfully connecting billions of decentralized people for so long now, so there is precedent for this type of concept.

I suggest heading over to vector.im - its the easiest on-ramp - and give it a try! i hope that helps!

That sounds ideal, thank you. I'm generally increasingly convinced that while decentralised services are great for many powerusers, they too often shift too much of the burden onto users, vastly diminishing the market penetration of what are nominally good ideas.

Another example of this is the current IndieWeb movement, which while great, doesn't fix very much because 1) low penetration means you have to republish all your content back into proprietary silos, regranting them license to use that we're supposed to be escaping and 2) by forcing people to set up and develop their own platforms means that the majority of indieweb blogs are subtly incompatible through bugs and mostly suck up time that could be used blogging with time spent to fix the blog.

:(

You hit the nail on the head with the challenges that you stated! While I'm a really, really big fan of decentralized platforms AND indieweb, i acknowledge that many (though not all) of the apps to allow users to on-ramp are not yet as simple as those that the proprietary silos/platforms might offer. Or the apps might be ok but requires more time/committment for users to set up things before extracting benefits. This of course sort of prevents otherwise willing new users from joining the fray...but I'm comforted by the fact that this is almost exactly how it was many years ago when the web first became available to the public, and many people thought things were "too tough" to get people onto the web; and yet here we are with so many people on the web. I'll admit that perhaps I'm an optimist. ;-) But i feel we just need to get a few Goldilocks-type killer apps to drastically ramp up user engagement. Cheers!