Thanks for mentioning XMPP. I never ran a server, but as a user I've been enjoying it. Also has its problems - for example, I picked some server to create my first account, and the other day the server disappeared for 6 hours. What do normal users (i.e. non-newbies like me) do in practice in these situations?

That said, I would love to hear your experience running an XMPP server. Do you still run it?