Understandable, trying to move friends and family between platforms is an herculean effort.

For everyone else interested in XMPP, you might want to check out:

• Snikket as a Server (intended to run on a cheap VPS): snikket.org/service/quickstart/
• Conversations.im as a Client: conversations.im
• ejabberd/prosody if you want to setup your own from scratch
• this compliance scanner which checks for (probably) the most common extensions for a chat server: compliance.conversations.im