[geekgonecrazy]

Rocket.Chat is an opensource team collaboration and omnichannel product. Its team collaboration features would be of the likes of slack / discord etc. The omnichannel features bring in different customer facing channels like facebook/twitter/instagram/whatsapp/telegram/livechat/etc into the tool.

Matrix is a protocol with a primary focus on federation. Rocket.Chat is basically adopting the Matrix Protocol to bring Federation into the product. This means that two Rocket.Chat servers from two different companies on their respective infrastructure can now talk to each other. Or even if you are on Rocket.Chat and want communicate with another company that is using Element(the client developed the same people that are developing the Matrix Protocol).

[tuerai]

rocketchat already had federation, but it is/was awful

[geekgonecrazy]

It definitely was still in its infancy. But I think this is where Rocket.Chat's decision makes tons of sense. Matrix has spent as many years I think as Rocket.Chat focusing on a protocol. So makes perfect sense to leverage all of that time and learnings.

Not to mention it means Federation with anyone that chooses to implement this common protocol. So beyond business interest alone but contributing to the greater ecosystem hopefully.