When communicating in groups, collaborating at work, or talking in online communities it's common to want to talk about a range of topics with the same set of people. We want to improve Element to make it easier to do that. Most people either painstakingly create multiple rooms and send invites to each one individually, or they brave our old and unloved Communities feature and hit its many limitations.

The original open web was born out of academia. It was designed so that scientists at universities and research institutes around the world could share knowledge between each other in a consistent way using an open standard. Today, the digital landscape has changed. It is largely dominated by centralised commercially-driven tech giants. They have changed the nature of the open web by developing their own proprietary systems, retaining power and data.

Element launches a mission to connect more than 100 million people trapped on ‘Good-Enough’ island... It’s the big one! After offering bridges to Discord, Slack and Telegram, Element Matrix Services (EMS) is now launching Microsoft Teams Bridging.

We’ve launched a brand new version of Element, called Element Home! It’s the Element app, but faster, personalised and under your control - all packaged up so you don’t have to worry about how it works! You can just enjoy the fact you know you chose someone you trust (us!) with your data. So that you know, here’s what’s going on behind the scenes with Element Home; in practice you’re getting your own fully managed, dedicated server alongside your Element app.

Channel your excitement! Element Matrix Services (EMS), our Matrix hosting platform, is formally launching Slack Bridging! Having soft-launched Slack Bridging last year, EMS already provides bridges to Slack for a wide range of customers and thousands of simultaneous users.

We’re delighted to announce that Element Matrix Services (EMS), our flagship Matrix hosting platform, has launched a fully managed bridge for text-channels in Discord. Discord Bridging brings interoperability between Matrix-based apps and the Discord chat platform. The fully-hosted bridge is now available within EMS via the Integrations tab of the EMS host management dashboard. A single bridge deployment currently supports up to 20 rooms by default, each with unlimited use.

Two unconnected events in the first week of 2021 have sped the adoption of decentralised real time communication. WhatsApp is being sucked dry by its data mining owner The first was an update to WhatsApp’s privacy policy. Rarely has a privacy policy managed to generate quite so much media coverage. Perhaps the first working day of the year wasn’t such a good time to bury bad news after all.

There’s much excitement today as Element Matrix Services (EMS), our digital sovereign Matrix-hosting platform, is now providing hosting for a fully managed bridge for Telegram that supports both direct and group messaging.

Wow! Yesterday the EU published the Digital Markets Act, a legislative proposal seeking to protect the fundamental rights of users in the digital world. This proposal has the potential to be a major catalyst for the emergence of a unifying communications layer for the open web. Indeed the Digital Markets Act is pushing interoperability between messaging apps, which is a major win for consumers.

Considering leaving Slack’s silo for a more open and secure world? We hear you! Element Matrix Services (EMS), the high-performance Matrix hosting solution from Element, is releasing a new service to help organisations migrate from Slack to Element; the Slack Migration Wizard.