Can digital pipes handle swine flu epidemic spikes?

Pandemics change human behavior for millions of people. Our networks may not be ready for those changes.

Just stay home. Wash your hands. Advice from the US CDC for people at risk of the 2009 swine flu. Mexican authorities urge avoiding face-to-face contact in many-to-many places like hospitals, museums, theaters, cinemas (releases of X-Men Origins and Star Trek are postponed), churches, sports events, public markets.

 Working at Home. While television (or streaming video) might substitute in sports and music events, bringing other work home is harder.

• Can mobile phones and the Internet create alternatives for information, education, service, and entertainment workers?
• Can employers keep workers home?
• Can employers quickly offer full digital command, communications, collaboration, coordination, and control services to sites scattered throughout a city?

Online communities swarm in response to emergencies and threats. 9-11, Tsunami relief, Katrina, Mumbai invasion, Southern California wildfires had four stages.

1. Spreading alarms ("hey did you see?") through many online media to trigger swarming. today, this includes tags and #hashtags, improving discoverability and transmissibility of the event and the event's memes. People want to know more. As people flock to the news, they create an overwhelming amount of repetition and echo and noise. So people start... 
2. Organizing to improve/concentrate/filter information. People want to make sense of the spew. At the start people create new topical blogs, email lists, facebook forums, YouTube channels. Volunteers transcribe television and radio reports, retweet headlines and commentary, timelines of government responses. In short filtering, digestion, and meaning step in. Then people want to help other people (and themselves). So you see
3. Online serves offline. Volunteers build specific services connecting online news/community to local people/places/activities. For Tsunami relief I participated in an instant call center via Skype community volunteers. Other services put together online databases of victims, or geomashups of hotspots, or fundraising projects, or medical information.
4. Aftermath. People are helped, most of the online world goes back to their lives, and some of the legacy systems persist to serve those still concerned or affected by the event.

By contrast, people shun common places and take refuge in their homes in a biological outbreak/epidemic/pandemic.

This creates new problems.

• Stage Leapfrogging. Surprise! Step 1 (alarming, swarming) will take place in hours. You'll move immediately to Step 2, managing information overload. You could wake up having missed your chance to shape your community's and business's response. Or first access to preventive measures. 
• Social Infrastructure Demand Scales. While millions are affected by most major disasters, pandemics could affect hundreds of millions, especially those in big cities where people congregate. Is twitter ready for 100 million new users? Facebook? CDC.gov? Amazon and Google cloud computing?
• Infrastructure Demand Shifts Home. Capacity is in the wrong place. Are the nation's ISPs ready to move data to residential pipes at workplace speeds, without residential caps, all day, every day? How fast can mobile carriers supplement residential coverage? Who would fund this buildout? Can we beef up the last mile faster than an epidemic spreads? Can we allocate resources based on where an epidemic hits first and worst, instead of using pure market forces?
• Cannot Filter Meaningful Signal from Abundant Noise. Today's tools don't help people consistently and reliably pick the vital, life changing information from the ordinary. So you'll miss product recalls, medical updates, neighborhood alerts in the lossy spew of mailing lists, social updates, and newsfeeds. Would you trust your family's life to a #hashtag ?
• Local Focus Without Local Filters. Many of our systems depend on hundreds or thousands of people looking intently at one topic. What happens when we have must hyperlocalize news and community? The ratio of participants-per-topic falls fast as people focus on their own lives, their own work, their own neighborhoods. Does your block have enough people updating the network so the social network benefits kick in? We clearly don't have tough, accurate filters/readers to help us focus by:
  • Geography (streets, blocks, buildings, neighborhoods),
  • Topic (all those people who might have congregated at baseball games, pubs, museums, city hall), and
  • Occupation (by employer, workplace, team, process, project, agency)
  • Clinic (chains of information, care, supplies, volunteers, alerting)
• Service Gaps. The digital divide has dramatic health effects on the poor, homeless, and underclasses. Tens of millions of the vulnerable are without mobile phones, email, or any frequent internet access. How do you connect offline people to online services?

What can we do to prepare?

See also:

• Ushahidi: Emergency Information Patterns and Thoughts on Swine Flu
• US: PanedemicFlu.gov, CDC.gov/swineflu
• UK: Health Protection Agency
• NYTimes: Swine Flu Cases Map
• HufPo: Swine-Flu News Channel
• iPhone: Swine Flu Tracker
• Google: Flu Trends
• Flu Fashion N95 masks

photos credit cc:by Randal Sheppard 

tags: skype, H1N1, google, wireless, mobile, isp, breakout, epidemic, pandemic, disaster, disasterplanning, infrastructure, disasterpreparedness, scenarios, flu, influenza, swineflu, cdc, who, hyperlocal

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Skype hiring a Terminator Accountant

Well, a termination accountant.

Not quite as cool as robot warrior accountants.

Based in Luxembourg.

Putting together all those SkypeIn and SkypeOut charges from termination service providers. Turning it into a stream of wisdom for managing partnerships, allocating resources, finding opportunities, keeping Skype competitive.  

Skype has more than 60 other job openings, most in Europe, none in the Americas.

tags: skype, jobs, careers, terminator, termination

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Skype Offers 25% Discount On Annual Subscriptions

In an effort to boost sales of annual subscriptions, Skype is offering a 25% discount on a 12-month subscription. If you act between now and May 6th, you can cut 1/4th of the cost off an unlimited SkypeOut Plan.

I currently have the US and Canada plan that allows me to do "unlimited calls" to any landline or mobile phone in the US or Canada. Last December, when I want to Barcelona for Nokia World 2008, this plan was very worth-while. I make calls just about every day utilizing the plan and from personal experience, call quality is very good!

You can also subscribe to the Unlimited World Plan that gives you unlimited calls to many countries for $12.95/month, before the discount is applied.

Additionally, you can cancel any of these plans at any time and also transfer between plans depending on your calling needs.

Call me at +1-503-334-2574, Skype me, follow @harrisja on Twitter and my website - Techcraver.com

PamFax updates, adds FaxIn, distances from Skype

PamFax is keeping fax alive with its 2.0 update and release for Windows and Macintosh desktops. Big changes:

• Two-way functionality: FaxIn numbers in 27 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA.
• More platforms: Mac version!
• Skype independence: You don't need to be a Skype user, have a Skype account, or use Skype credits any more.
• Click-to-Fax: Extensions for facebook and Salesforce.com. 

Makes me wish I knew someone who used a fax.

PamFax 2.0 product announcement

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tags: skype, pamfax, mac, windows

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Skype's 2009q1 showed IPO-worthy growth and profits

CORRECTION: Skype's year-over-year revenue growth is 38% after correcting for foreign exchange. We reported 28%. 

eBay announced quarterly reports today. Skype did well. Activity continues to go up, revenue goes up, people keep joining at a faster rate.

Skype's Freemium Rate (the blue line below) holds steady, showing people are still willing to pay to talk, finding value in Skype's paid services.

26.5 billion minutes called last quarter. 23.6 billion minutes free Skype-to-Skype, 2.9 billion minutes Skype-to-PSTN. 1 in 8 people paid for Skype calling (Freemium Rate: 8.1).

Revenues continue to rise at a rate about the same as new users trying Skype.  

Revenue: $153.2 million

• $613 million/year run rate
• 21% year-over-year growth in dollars, 38% yoy foreign exchange neutral
• $143 million from transactions, $10 million from marketing and other revenue
• 80% from international (non-USA) sources

37.9 million new accounts

• 416,484 new accounts per day
• 443.2 million accounts (cumulative)

Skype reports non-mobile users connected to the Skype cloud (Skype dialtone) throughout the day. On weekdays, this number is now ranging between 16-17 million at peak and 9-10 million. It rolls as different time zones come online. This puts the number of active users at between 100 and 150 million by Skype Journal estimates.

The growth in online users has been growing in a straight line for years. There's a summer slow-down for seasonality, but Skype could be at a weekday peak of 18 million simultaneous by 2009 year-end.

Skype is on page 16 of eBay's slides below.

eBay 2009q1 Earnings Slides

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tags: skype, ebay, financials, 2009q1, stats, statistics, trends

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AT&T 2009q1 Earnings Call slides

One half of the US Internet access duopoly reported it continues to drag its heels rolling out higher speed midband connectivity through DSL (U-Verse) and wireless. Here are the slides from today's investor conference call.

2009q1 AT&T Earnings Slides

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tags: t, att, at&t, skype, 1q09, 2009q1, financials, slides

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Skype for Windows 4.0.0.226 hotfix

Download the update.

9 prominent bugs resolved:

• Extras Manager was not installed to some users
• Skype incorrectly advised users of new Audio Devices available
• When adding a new number the phone type was incorrectly labeled
• Re-adding contacts to a existing conversation did not display the contact in the Add contacts drop down menu
• Video did not always scale correctly
• Skype occasionally crashed when uPnP port forwarding failed
• Improved uPnP handling for Linksys WRTG54G owners
• When dialing certain numbers some digits were erased from the beginning and the number became invalid
• Audio device was reset for some users on each Skype start

tags: skype, download, downloads, windows, 4, hotfix

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NGN IMS Forum continues making dump pipes smarter with billing interop

The Internet was designed to be dumb pipes with smarts at the edge. The telecommunications industry hates that. So the industry has been building smarts into the network with services like IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) since 1999. IMS is the phone industry's middleware between the transport layer (where data moves) and the application layer (where services like voicemail run on phone company servers). 

The Next Generation Network (NGN) and IMS Forum announced last Tuesday a new standards effort to inject IMS with business (billing, charging, policy control) and operations (provisioning, security, and reliability) services.  "The train has left the station; now we're jumping on the moving train" said the Forum's Michael Khalilian. The first deliverables are new functional requirements and architectural documents due later this year.

The telecom industry brought together Internet Protocol (IP) voice and data systems from regional phone companies, long distance carriers, mobile operators, cable companies, ISPs,  and others. Now that IP at the low end works, all the high end stuff is now a problem for interoperability, partnership and M&A.

Pulling together all this app functionality onto servers that live in phone company data centers will let carriers sell smartphone apps (think Apple + Skype + AT&T) and reconcile costs and revenue (walled garden 2.0). These IMS services will also replace the "best effort" approach of the Internet with the "quality of service" for streaming audio and video.

This project will be closed, limited to members of NGN IMS Forum, but you can email admin@imsforum.org for access to the listserv. 

So, my take:

1. Control. Telcos want to own the whole value chain. IMS is the walled garden's map. These extensions to IMS pull control over customer experiences, business models, and functionality from developers to carriers, from the application layer to the control layer.
2. Monetization. These particular standards will be used to meter every last bit customers use. After deployment, you won't be able to use "unlimited broadband" and "flat rate" in the same sentence.
3. Privacy. While intended for inter-service interop, there's a surveillance society element to this. Social consequences are not on the agenda.

Meanwhile, folks like Skype are building "over the top" services running on the edge, independent of pipes made smarter by NGN or IMS.

 

News release:

IMS Forum^® Launches BSS/OSS & Security Technical Working Group

To Establish Architectural Requirements for NGN BSS/OSS and Security

in Real-time Service Environments

Las Vegas, NV– April 14, 2009 -- The NGN and IMS Forum^®, the only industry associations dedicated to interoperability and certification of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Next Generation Network (NGN) applications and services, announced today at the Billing & OSS World Conference & Expo the creation of its BSS/OSS & Security Technical Working Group.

The working group will help guide industry momentum for an integrated BSS/OSS framework to enable cost-effective transition to IMS/NGN environments. NGN IMS Forum members have demonstrated billing interoperability in the past six Plugfests™ and through commercial deployments. This new working group will focus on the billing and charging, policy control and security functions required by service providers to capture the value promised by NGN networks. HP will chair the working group with support from vice-chairs, Comverse and Mu Dynamics. Other industry leaders such as, Acision, Aricent and Tekelec are also founding members.

“We have learned through the course of our last 6 Plugfests that billing OSS and security play an integral role in the successful implementation of integrated communications services utilizing NGN and IMS,” said Michael Khalilian, Chairman and President NGN and IMS Forum. “We look forward to including the input from this Technical and Business Working Group in our Plugfest 7 interoperability test event and in future Plugfests.”

“Service providers can re-use existing resources, lower costs, and increase revenue opportunities through an integrated BSS/OSS," said Nigel Upton, Director, Communications and Media, Solutions, HP. "With interoperability already demonstrated, our working group will strengthen the business and technical foundation that service providers need for a smooth transition to IMS and next-generation services.”

The Working Group will develop guidelines on the business and technical aspects of BSS/OSS and security in IMS and NGN services and will define the architecture and requirements for network interoperability and reliable real-time IP service application deployment. It will focus on the operational and management of converged IMS/NGN applications and services delivered over wireless (3G, LTE), wireline (DSL, optical) and cable broadband. The group will ensure that converged applications and services will have timely and complete support from provisioning, billing and management systems. A whitepaper describing BSS/OSS considerations of NGN will be the group’s first deliverable and is planned by mid-year. 

“This working group underscores the importance of ‘smart monetization’ approaches in creating successful business models to leverage the full potential of Next-Generation Networks,” said Gabriel Matsliach, General Manager, Billing & Active Customer Management at Comverse, who will serve as the Group’s vice chair. “The group will draw on our experience in supporting any combination of network, service and payment types, including true quad-play offers.”

“As a two-year veteran of the IMS/NGN Forum and their Plugfest events, Mu Dynamics is pleased to see the increased industry interest in secure Next-Generation Network deployments that prevent unexpected weaknesses in real-time networked applications,” said Adam Stein, vice president of Marketing for Mu Dynamics who will also serve as the group’s vice chair. “Many of our operator and vendor clients play an integral role in this important ecosystem with a high percent of their revenue dependent upon resilient, reliable and secure product development and continuous service deployment.”

About Plugfest 7

IMS OSS/BSS & Security Working Group will be an integral part of the IMS Forum’s Plugfest™ 7 interoperability test that will take place in June 1-5, 2009 at the InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham, NH.  Participation in NGN IMS Plugfest 7 is open to all companies. For online registration and info contact the forum at: info@IMSforum.org or visit event at www.NGNforum.org.

About the NGN Forum™ and IMS Forum^®

The NGN and IMS Forum are the only global telecommunications associations devoted to Next Generation Networks (NGN) service delivery and interoperable IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services architectures and solutions. The Forum’s mission is to enable delivery of M-play™: rich multimedia, mobility and fixed services over wireline, cable, GSM, UMTS, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, LTE and fiber broadband networks. The Forum is the creator and organizer of the IMS Plugfests™ and NGN Plugfests™, the industry's only events focused on verification and certification of IMS and NGN service interoperability through the IMS Certified™ and NGN Certified™ programs.

Through organized Plugfests, technical working groups and other activities, Forum members develop cost-effective technical frameworks for revenue generating converged IP NGN solutions.  The combined organizations include over 2000 executives and technical, business development and marketing professionals from global and emerging equipment vendors, solution providers, integrators, service providers, and governmental agencies. For additional information or to join the NGN Forum, IMS Forum the IMS Plugfest, and/or the NGN Plugfest, please visit www.IMSforum.org or www.NGNforum.org.

tags: ngn, ims, plugfest, gsm, umts, wi-fi, wifi, wimax, lte, ngnforum, imsforum, bss, oss

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype's market value over time

By Jean Mercier, Skype Numerologist and regular contributor to Skype Journal.

Wandering over the Internet I found several comments on the value of Skype, for instance here and here.

Interesting to see an analyst predicted a revenue of $786 million (for 2010? I guess this was a typo, and they meant 2009) while I predicted $750 million for 2009 in a private chat with some Skype fanatics some days ago.

Well, lets wait to refine the predictions: eBay will divulge their results Wednesday for the first quarter of 2009!

[EDITED] Added on the graph the weighted average of the Skype Journal Poll based on 68 votes.

tags: skype, statistics, trends, marketcap, value, valuation, ipo, analysts, ebay

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype's Crypto Revolution

Mass encryption. 1.15 billion downloads. Hundreds of millions of people are using Skype's strong cryptography to talk. Encrypted for the very first time. Thanks to Skype. This is a notable achievement.

The last successful mass distribution of cryptography was SSL (secure sockets layer). Browsers alert you are talking securely to a web site by the little closed padlock icon. SSL let the world feel safe to share secrets. Banking. Taxes. Voting. Medical records. Divorce. School.

Skype's encryption gives people the same freedom to talk.

Most people don't know Skype safeguards their calls. There is no "padlock" to show that the other people in your conversation are also using secure Skype clients.

America's "founding fathers" would have liked cryptography a lot.  They would have viewed it as protected under the Second Amendment where "the People" are guaranteed the right to bear arms, not just for personal defense (which was obvious to them), but also because politicians prefer unarmed peasants. An unarmed populace is much easier to dominate. And so is a populace without the ability to have privacy.

— Hudson Barton

What data does Skype keep?

Clearly Skype has call records from SkypeIn and SkypeOut, so they can bill for time according to their tariffs and charge appropriate taxes. They also have records of when you log in through a client or the web to the authentication service.

Skype may keep a copy of the material in your account that's backed up onto Skype servers (profile, contacts, history, preferences like call forwarding). However that data may be encrypted so Skype wouldn't have the burden of sharing the data under a subpoena or be exposed to financial risks in the event of a security breach.

While it's not impossible for Skype to have engineered tattle-tale features into the client, reporting on p2p activity, there is no evidence of spyware in research done by independent researchers or by anyone else.

Skype has compelling business interests to assure customer privacy. Unless you're from China, you don't load Skype with the assumption your government, your employer, your priest, your ex's private detective, your insurance company, your political party, your local police department, or anyone else has the ability to know who you talk with or what you say to each other. You trust your phone company and Skype to keep your confidences as much as physically and legally possible. Unlike your phone company, Skype has done more to encrypt conversations.

Skype is legally better off not keeping any data it does not absolutely need to keep. And there is no technical reason for Skype to keep a log of your in-Skype-network chats or calls.

Ashton Skypes Oprah, disrupting electronic field TV production

Watch famous people using Skype. Skype quickly fades into the background, focus returning to the people and what they say. But how did they do it? Why use Skype when The Oprah Winfrey Show can rent a team to shoot Ashton Kutcher's side of the segment?

Remote participation via Skype in television production is disruptive technology: vastly more convenient, orders of magnitude cheaper, and lower but tolerable quality than other forms of electronic field production.

• Cost. Today's remote live video shoots might cost $25k+ for satellite time, gear, van, and a crew (camera operator, sound recordist, producer, hair & make-up artist, lighting technician). This is more production value than a field reporter

  On the other hand, let's say it costs $10k for a high-end Mac including free Skype software, webcams, insurance, geek time, mobile Internet, and a mobile phone for the control channel. Spread the cost over twenty guests/interviews, you might spend $500 for a shoot where the guest hooks themselves up in 15 minutes (power into the laptop, plug in the webcam, turn it on, fire up Skype, press the green "Video Call" button). And now guests like Kutcher are Skype-ready; no cost to you.

• Convenience. With broadband in many places, with laptops and webcams benefiting from Moore's Law, you can overnight a Skyped-up laptop with a good webcam and a good microphone, ready to go tomorrow. Or your guest runs out to Best Buy or RadioShack for a webcam and is back and ready in 90 minutes.

• Acceptable Quality. Skype doesn't capture in hi-def and most webcams don't use the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio. Skype can reproduce 640x480@30fps with high end webcams, good enough for talking heads. You can see that Ashton's end of the show is poorly lit, color balance is off, he's not been through hair or makeup (or wardrobe), his office is badly decorated to get unlicensed art off the wall behind him. Nobody cares.

Skype's dialtone made that show possible without blowing the show's budget, without flying Kutcher from his office at Katalyst Films to Chicago for three days, spending five hours hosting a remote crew at his office, or even three hours to drive to a local television station for fifteen minutes of air time. It was almost as easy as having someone phone in. But with better audio and with live two-way video.

This changes the economics of television production. Don't ration your remote guest spots because they cost too much or take too long to prep. Just Skype them to your studio, enrich your program with live, just-in-time feeds on the cheap.

People are bringing Skype into the workplace. Millions solve problems, lower costs, create new services, work more effectively, and unleash human talent. The O Show is just one of the most visible.

P.S. Here's the second half of the segment.

See also:

• [BBC] Reporters Using Skype, Skype Journal, 2005
• Skype Video for "Live On Location" Television, Skype Journal, 2007
• The Skype - Oprah Feedback Loop - It Works in Strange Ways, Skype Journal, 2008
• Skype product placement: Who Wants to be a Millionaire (US), Skype Journal, January 2009

tags: skype, twitter, productivity, television, production, collaboration, innovation, distruption, disruptive technology, oprah, oprahwinfrey, ashton, ashtonkutcher

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

2009 Q1 Google Earnings Slides

2009 Q1 Google Earnings Slides

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The face of the Great Recession. From Google's quarterly conference call. 

A maturing market? Or a contracting market?

Weakening seems to be all US for now.

The good news is that as the economy tanked, and per-unit ad values fell, Google spent less on advertising to bring in traffic.  

What will eBay do with Skype money? Buy into Korea

$US 1.2 billion for a stake in South Korea's Gmarket auction site. Skype had better fetch a pretty penny if eBay Inc. is going to keep up this M&A effort.

Skype is currently operating in Korea as part of eBay's Auction company. Will Skype's separation from eBay require reorganizing their Korean operations?

The press release and SEC Form 8-K.

UPDATE: eBay stock is back where it was a week ago, discounting both the Skype IPO and Gmarket news.

tags: skype, ebay, gmarket, auction, kr, korea, business, investment, m&a

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Ping.fm takes updates from Skype IM

Ping.fm is a synch service in the social stack, mostly in microblogging and rich presence. Set up on Ping.fm:

Enable posting with Skype

To enable posting through Skype, request to add the bot "pingdotfm" by searching for the username and add it as a contact. When the bot appears on your contacts list, send it an IM with your verification code.

The ping.fm page will show your verification code once you log in to the site.

Ping.fm posts results in multiple places.

Twitter. (microblogging)

Vox. (blogging)

LinkedIn. (professional network updates)

This is one of many ways to update your Ping.fm account so Ping.fm can update your many online lifestreams. Ping.fm's bots also talk with AIM, jabber (including Google Talk), Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.

Hat tip to the Pacific IT chat.

tags: skype, ping.fm, synch, synchronization, dataportability, microblogging, im, chat, twitter, linkedin, vox

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype for iPhone 1.0.2 - hotfix

Upgrade in the App Store. Raul's announcement. A few bug fixes. Still free.

Still in the App Store's Top Ten Free Apps list at #10. #1 at the moment is the new F-MyLife app, storytelling about how your life is F'd.

tags: skype, iphone, hotfix, bugfix

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype on the Web Trend Tokyo Train Map

I love these kinds of industry visualization projects. This is "the web industry" layered atop the Tokyo train system. 

Here's a close-up of the Skype station on the Money line, with Janus Friis standing by. Serving Harajuku. Sharing a line with eBay and PayPal this year.

Skype is looking more successful than eBay, less than PayPal, comparably stable.

There are no lines for Conversation, Talk, Communication, Collaboration, or Getting Things Done. Where would you put an independent Skype post-IPO? The Application Line with other platform plays like Google, Adobe, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Mozilla and Facebook? 2010 looks interesting.

Art by Information Architects.

tags: skype, ecosystem, datavisualization, mapping, maps, dataviz, industry, ebay

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype To Be Spun Off, Makes Plans for IPO

A huge shock in the Internet telephony world today, as Skype parent company eBay has announced plans to spin Skype off into it's own separate company. Additionally, Skype will be taken public with an Initial Public Offering in 2010.

As their blog states:

"Skype is a great stand-alone business with strong fundamentals and accelerating momentum," said eBay Inc.'s President and CEO, John Donahoe. "But it's clear that Skype has limited synergies with eBay and PayPal. We believe operating Skype as a stand-alone publicly traded company is the best path for maximizing its potential. This will give Skype the focus and resources required to continue its growth and effectively compete in online voice and video communications. In addition, separating Skype will allow eBay to focus entirely on our two core growth engine - e-commerce and online payments - and deliver long-term value to our stockholders."

This is huge news, as rumors have been swirling for the past few weeks surrounding Skype's future. Many thought Skype might be sold off to another firm. Also, there were other rumors that the founders of Skype might try to buy the company back from eBay, after eBay spent $3.1 Billion a few years ago to acquire Skype.

I've never thought eBay would sell off Skype to another entity as the company has reliable profits (around $551 million last year) and is strongly positioned in the VoIP telephony market.

Also, Josh Silverman is an excellent CEO thus far and Skype has a fantastic management team all around.

Skype has had great successes in the last few month, including the introduction of their iPhone application, which had amazing download numbers. The app had been downloaded more than 1 million times within 26 hours of it's debut on the the iTunes store.

I'm anxious to see what's next out of Skype, the granddaddy of VoIP today.

[Official Press Release]

Call me at +1-503-334-2574, Skype me, follow @harrisja and my website - Techcraver.com

eBay makes a market in Skype stock

So you've read about eBay making an IPO of some Skype stock in early 2010 after "the founders’ offer fell on deaf ears."

This means:

• The stock market values Skype, instead of bankers or M&A experts. Mark Evans. "Skype has a strong, global brand and a fast-growing business to pull off an IPO. In fact, Skype’s IPO could be red-hot given how it will have strong appeal to retail investors."
• Value When The Market Is Low. The IPO won't be for all of Skype's stock. It could be for as little as ten percent. A 2010h1 IPO will value Skype near the bottom of a (presumed) economic and stock market recovery. So Skype's prices should rise with the market if the IPO is executed properly.
• Bargaining chip? Friis and Zennstrom were clearly trying to preempt a public valuation, getting Skype cheaply. Could an IPO actually help F&Z raise more money to buy Skype before an IPO?
  • Brier Dudley. "I wonder if this will be a milestone, marking the return of tech IPOs. Or could it be a negotiation tactic, to get someone to buy Skype before the offering?"
  • Larry Dignan: "My translation: eBay wants Zennstrom and Friis to raise their price for Skype. And the threat of a Skype IPO is one handy way to get that price up."
  • On the other hand, Alan Marks said for eBay "We're not soliciting bids, we're pursuing an IPO."
• More Liquidity. Post IPO, eBay can sell off the rest of its shares as it sees fit, hopefully appreciated. Meanwhile it can recognize its Skype holdings at more than the post-write-down purchase value.
• Bet on Management. IPOs are a vote of confidence in a company's management. John Furrier: "This again is total validation for the new management at Skype and Josh Silverman. Josh has masterfully led this rapid acceleration of one of the best performing five years old since ‘Sunshine Street’."
• Happy HR. Skype employees will switch to Skype stock instead of eBay stock, improving hiring, retention and motivation.
• Identity. Ownership won't change Skype's operations. It will probably affect their financial reporting, no longer filtered through eBay. 
• No debt to speak of.
• The deal itself: Goldman Sachs may get to sell Skype. No word on which stock exchange will get to IPO Skype. 
• Lots to talk about at the eBay investor call next week.

Other buzz...

Reuters analysts regurgitate useless information.

Andy Abramson is concerned about the company: "But, the issue around JOLT ID needs to be clarified and other questions remain, mostly how in a measured broadband world, Skype keeps playing without any payment to the ISPs, how they deal with the regulators and E911 issues as they look more and more like a telco each day; what their mobile strategy is and more."

Rich Tehrani is excited for VoIP: "It will wipe away the idea that Vonage represents the entire IP communications market."

Alec Saunders is excited for the stock market: "A massive Skype IPO would be just the thing to electrify financial markets, and bring tech stocks back with a roar.  Could Skype have the same impact on financial markets as Netscape with their massive IPO in the 1990’s?  We can only hope."

Larry Dignan is excited for the M&A game: "Now is a good time to take Skype public. It’s growing, it has a critical mass and it could be a fine acquisition target in the future—for a company other than eBay. By plotting an IPO eBay is clearly stating that Skype is worth more. Game on."

tags: ipo, skype, ebay, financials, investment

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Could Plantronics launch the first SILK Bluetooth headset?

Someone has to go first. Plantronics' teaser campaign promises Bluetooth and vague delights. But what I really want is a great Bluetooth headset, a digital signal processor with Skype's SILK codec inside, and a superwideband highest-fidelity microphone (so you can hear the real me). Launch is set for nine days and seven hours from now.

 

tags: plantronics, headset, bluetooth, silk, skype, mobile

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

"The founders’ offer fell on deaf ears"

From the WSJ.com Deal Blog [links and emphases mine]:

A group including KKR, Warburg Pincus, Providence* and Elevation Partners recently teamed up to back the founders of Skype in an attempt to buy back their free Internet calling service from Ebay, according to people familiar with the bid.

Founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis originally approached Ebay about repurchasing Skype, which acquired the service for $2.6 billion in 2005. Ebay encouraged them to make an offer, and the Scandinavian billionaires rounded up a group of private-equity firms to back them, the person familiar with the bid said. News of the Skype’s founders’ offer was earlier reported in the New York Times, but names of the private-equity firms have not yet been reported.

The proposal involved private-equity firms contributing some $1 billion to the deal, according to people familiar with the situation, though a full deal price could not be learned. The transaction also involved Ebay providing financing for the deal.

The founders’ offer fell on deaf ears, as it was well below the price at which Ebay was willing to sell the business. The two sides are far apart and at this stage a deal involving the private-equity firms is unlikely to be completed, said people familiar with the matter.

*I suspect it was Provident Bankshares, not Providence; Provident is about to be purchased by KKR.

So this gets back to valuation. Survey: What's a fair price for Skype?

Skype Journal investor relations events (22,29 April), forum, etherpad

1. Coming events:
   • eBay's Q1 2009 Earnings Call
     April 22, 2009
   • 2009 Annual Meeting of Stockholders
     April 29, 2009
2. Join our Skype Journal Investor Forum to track the news and dissect the financial statements. This is a Skype chat.
3. Let's etherpad the 22 April earnings call. I thought we'd try collaborative note taking with EtherPad, a realtime wiki page. Our etherpad (free, browser based) lets us see everyone typing on a single page at the same time. Creative commons. Kinda fun.

tags: skype, ebay, investor, skypejournal, 10Q

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

What's a good price for Skype Ltd?

New York Times reports Skype founders Zennstrom and Friis are raising about $1 billion to buy back Skype. The article says some analysts think eBay would want at least Skype's book value: $1.7 billion.

So what would a good market value be? Skype are profitable to the tune of $100+ million/year. Ten times earnings seems lowball to me.

Two years from now Skype could easily have $1 billion in revenue. At current 20% profits, that's $200 million in free cash per year. 10x suggests a $2 billion value.

Unless there's a premium for growth. Skype might easily step into adjacent markets. $1 billion run rate in three years for a light version of WebEx-style conferencing. $1 billion in two years for a cloud computing platform that lets you build Skype into your web apps and enterprise systems. $1 billion in four years for Skype inside of televisions and set top boxes.

Despite eBay's protestations, there are also massive opportunities for eBay-Skype-PayPal synergy. What eBay and PayPal do for markets that bring together buyers and sellers of atoms, eBay+Skype+PayPal could do for markets of service, information, education, and entertainment, a much larger market. Sadly, every eBay alum I've talked with in the last six months says eBay execs are incapable of that much innovation, head stuck firmly inside the 1999 eCommerce box.

Which leaves us with the price.

At what price will eBay sell?

tags: skype, ebay, financials, marketvalue

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

1 in 10 iPhone users downloaded iSkype

Skype crossed the two million download mark in a week. Apple's sold roughly 20 million iPhones. So 1 in 10 iPhone users downloaded Skype. A happy way to start the quarter.

Meanwhile, just for context, Apple is counting up to its one billionth download. So Skype's all-time share is 1 in 500. In the US it's already down to #3 among free downloads, behind #1 Awesome Ball and #2 iFighter (congrats on one million downloads!).

Note: Skype isn't including iPhone or other mobile application store downloads in its realtime stats feed. I'm sure they'll be add in for financial statements, but the Skype.com download statistics are no longer complete.

tags: skype, iphone, iskype, apple, mobile, downloads, statistics

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

A few shots from the Skype party at CTIA Mobile 2009

Company parties at tradeshows have messages. Skype's Wednesday night party at last week's CTIA Mobile 2009 event had a few.

• Fruit: Celebrating the launch of Skype for the Apple iPhone and announcement of Skype Lite for the Blackberry. Without permission to use the logos, Skype had the two fruit (apples, blackberries) on murals, in staff wigs, inside furniture, in cocktails, in ice sculptures, and in deserts.
• Circus: Performers from Cirque du Soleil (or something similar) performed throughout the evening, on stage and intimately. Jugglers, strong men, gymnasts, acrobats, mimes. Buxom hostesses in dramatic wardrobe spent an hour learning how to demo Skype for iPhone and four hours in makeup. Message: excitement.
• Ice: Skype ice sculptures decorated a Bellagio ballroom. An ice tower at the entrance, an ice pool table (along with pool cues and billiard balls) on the terrace, and a large monument in a lounge area. Message: we're showing our money.

Everyone there had a great time. Good food, smart people, pleasant music quiet enough that you could talk them, warm weather, and elbow room amid garishly over the top decoration and eye candy.

This was the first year Skype showed up in force at CTIA Mobile. The party was spoils of Skype's war as the company moves into mobile telecom in a big way, with high margins, high growth, increased share, and sustained profits.

After the circus acts, Scott Durchlag introduced Skype's first television commercial. 

A six foot tall ice tower in the Bellagio hallway.

 

A full size pool table cast in ice. Folks played for hours, even as it melted. The far right pocket was a sure thing as it warmed up first.

This large ice statue overlooking the courtyard was filled little apples, symbolic of the iPhone.

After the party, the ice crew dismantled the Skype sculptures.

Heavy, massive ice blocks.

Skype carted off in pieces.

I asked several CTIA Mobile alumni if the event was overkill. They all said it was a shout out to the mobile carriers that Skype was here in a big way and here to stay.

My take: Old school B2B industry marketing. Just one deal with any of dozen heavyweights there will pay for Skype's party, press conference, Showstoppers press event, and sponsorship of the VIP Lounge at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

tags: skype, party, ctia09, ctia, citamobile09, bellagio, lasvegas, vegas, marketing, promotion, april, blackberry, apple, circus, iphone, tv, commercial, advertising, ice, fruit

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype for Mac 2.8 Beta 2 (2.8.0.324)

Download the latest. 59 bugfixes. New: edit your account inside the Skype client, added a screen sharing spectator window.

For programmers: "get skypeversion", "get chat x dialog_partner", and "ping" are now in the Mac's Skype API. via Peter Parkes.

tags: skype, apple, beta, mac, download

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype Mobile Battle: iPhone vs. PSP

Guest Post by Andy Yang of The Mobile Experience Blog

Skype, one of the most used IM/Chat/VOIP/Video-Conferencing application for PC and Mac is slowly working its dominance up the mobile alley and we love it! I've always known it's support for Windows Mobile, Nokia devices and Wi-Fi Phones (Skype Phones) but it was the recent integration with Sony's Playstation Portable firmware upgrade as well as the hot-off-the-press Skype for iPhone/iPod Touch that is really cooking up some serious mobile progress. With Skype application for BlackBerry phones coming soon, Skype is in a very good position to become one of the leaders in mobile application. Having Skype on the go across multiple platform is definitely going to enhance our mobile experience, this is very exciting indeed.

In this article, I will attempt to compare Skype for iPhone vs. Skype for Playstation Portable. I'll update this entry when the BlackBerry version becomes available.

The iPhone (iPod Touch) and Playstation Portable is arguably two of the most popular gadgets for travelers on the go. When I review communication gadgets or software, I always like to imagine myself traveling abroad where I would not have access to a local cell phone and would like to keep in touch with friends or family at the luxury of my own mobile gadget. The appeal of Skype has always been there for me for that reason, that is why a laptop has been essential for all my travels until smartphones started to feature applications to support various communication needs such as Fring. That said, I think iPhone or Playstation Portable (PSP) are two of the most carried devices for travelers. I can just see myself in an airport lounge dialing international long distance over Wi-Fi to keep in touch with loved ones via either device.

Skype for iPhone

The iPhone and iPod Touch needs very little introduction. With a large touch screen display and portrait layout, it makes a very good UI candidate for Skype (much like its desktop counterpart).

Everything is integrated so well together on this handy little app. For example, your contacts from your iPhone is automatically hooked up with Skype in addition to its default contact list. To see who is online, you can easily toggle the software button towards the top of the screen.

One of the big advantage of iPhone is it's integrated microphone that Skype can take advantage of without the need of additional headset. The VOIP function will only work in a Wi-Fi environment (at home, coffee house, airport lounges, etc...) whereas the text Chats can work over your phone's standard data plan.

I love the fact that this little app does everything its desktop counter part can do, including editing one's profile or add more Skype-out funds over the handset. Overall, its an amazing application that has been done right, I love it and its free to download!

Pros: Excellent UI and layout, very easy to use and intuitive. Perfect integration to leverage iPhone's hardware (buttons, camera, etc...) Everything your desktop Skype can do can be done here!

Cons: No VOIP over 3G data, no web-cam video conference, app must be installed separately (only mentioning this because PSP is part of firmware OS)

Skype for Playstation Portable (PSP)

I love the convenience of having my beloved PSP-3000 as a gaming device and knowing it can also surf the web with Flash while keeping up with the communications needs via Skype.

No application to install here, its part of the firmware 3.90+ upgrade. While the PSP doesn't have a touchscreen UI and the horizontal layout is not taking advantage of the screen real estate as much, it does offer a full suite of Skype features. The SkypeOut and VOIP PC calls are there along with text chat.

Because the onscreen keyboard is driven by the directional keys and based on the 12-button numeric pad, it can be frustrating when compared to the overall iPhone experience.

The one part I have to gripe about is the need of an external microphone. My Griffin Tune Buds Mobile with integrated mic works great but if I forgot my headphones at home then I am stuck with only text chats capabilities. While Sony and Skype recommend you buy their official headset/mic kit, the iPhone OEM headset with mic should work as well. Sony should have integrated a mic solution, after all, this is their 3rd revision to the PSP franchise.

Lets hope Skype will be available for the DS or DSi someday. Overall, I still enjoy having the option of running Skype on my PSP. While its unlikely I'll be traveling only the PSP, I can see myself using the PSP for Skype to conserve the battery life for my iPhone while traveling abroad. Due to the nature of not having any data connection, the entire operation is rendered useless if I am not nearby a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Pros: Fully integrated as part of PSP firmware, no application install required. PSP's large display is great for Skype.

Cons: Lack of integrated Mic (and Camera for profile picture, etc...) Wi-Fi is required all the time for any communications (including text chat)

Winner: Skype for iPhone! With voice call quality being relatively the same, I have to go with iPhone because you just can't beat the convenience of having your iPhone with Skype with you at all times. The integrated mic makes the entire package there and ready to go 24/7. The touchscreen plays well with the UI and it has instantly become one of those default applications I must have on my iPhone.

tags: skype, psp, sony, playstation, apple, iphone, iskype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype Rates and Least Cost Routing

Guest post by Jason Goecke, Adhearsion

Now that Skype is coming to the enterprise with Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP, they will need to enhance the data available for their calling rates. Enabling Least Cost Routing (LCR) is a must for any VoIP provider to the enterprise. LCR allows a phone system to determine, on a call by call basis, which VoIP provider to use based on the best rates associated to the country code or prefix being dialed.

As of now Skype publishes a web page of calling rates based on the country name and the per minute rate including or excluding the tax. A few additional items are needed to make this usable for LCR systems:

• The associated country code for each country (i.e. - ‘34′ for Spain, ‘1′ for the US, etc)
• More granular prefixes where calling rates may differ (i.e. - ‘346′ for Spanish mobiles, ‘336′ for French mobiles, ‘1212′ for NYC, ‘1712′ for Iowa, etc)
• Billing intervals
• A file download in CSV, or similar format, for import into LCR systems

Of course, in the meantime it is easy enough to scrape the website and convert the available data into a more appropriate format. Here is an example, in Ruby, of how this may be done in a trivial way:

1. require 'rubygems'
2. require 'open-uri'
3. require 'nokogiri'
4. require 'json'
6. skype_rates = Hash.new
7. skype_url = 'http://www.skype.com/prices/callrates/#allRatesTab'
8. skype_htmldoc = Nokogiri::Hpricot(open(skype_url).read) 
9. (skype_htmldoc/'table.listing//tr.r1').each do |country| 
10.   country_name = country.at('td').inner_html 
11.   skype_rates.merge!({ country_name => { 'amount' => country.at('span.amount').inner_html.split('<!')[0].gsub('$ ', '').to_f, 
12. 'vat' => country.at('span.vat').inner_html.split('<!')[0].gsub('$ ', '').to_f } }) 
13. end
15. p skype_rates.to_json 

Which produces JSON output as follows:

1. { 
2. "Bolivia-La Paz": { 
3. "amount":0.122, 
4. "vat":0.14 
5.   }, 
6. "Sweden - Mobile": { 
7. "amount":0.292, 
8. "vat":0.336 
9.   }, 
10. "Hong Kong": { 
11. "amount":0.021, 
12. "vat":0.024 
13.   } 
14. } 

You may then perform a Regular Expression against another data source to derive the appropriate country codes/prefixes and store those in your LCR system. A good example of the additional detail needed is provided by Flowroute.

I have on my list of actions to create an Adhearsion component to provide LCR capabilities for any Adhearsion application. The plan is to support a wide number of VoIP providers and other data inputs as a part of this plug-in.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how Skype goes about publishing their rates with additional details and formats for download.

UPDATE @JimCanuck points out it is not just about least cost, but also about quality of termination. Skype has some interesting approaches to call quality. More here.

tags: skype, lcr, cost, routing, asterisk, adhearsion, voip

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

A dozen topics I'd love to see at eComm Amsterdam 2009, SFO 2010

The previous formal call for speakers and how to express your interest in speaking or sponsoring. The first Emerging Communications Conference in Amsterdam is slated for sometime in the first two weeks of October 2009. The 2010 eComm San Francisco will be 2-4 March 2010.

A dozen topics I'd love to hear:

1. Digital identity barriers to mobile community. Products that get it and grow, and those that don't and fail the leap to community.
2. Lessons from six months of Skype on the iPhone, three months on Nokia smartphones. What worked, what didn't. What was hot in some markets and not in others. What Skype changed for OS3 and the new model iPhones.
3. Mobile programmers emulating the music business ecosystem. iTunes and the other mobile stores are baiting small teams to form garage bands, craft apps the way musicians make songs, market themselves to followers the way bands do, and trade off publishing/producing themselves or getting signed to a major label. Store optimization changes mobile software design, software engineering practices, and business models.
4. Mobile data portability: the new privacy policy. Can you move, get, sync, and use your data (profile, contacts, conversations, media, and history) among mobile applications? Across phones? Between carriers? Between your PCs, web sites and your mobile? Not likely. Let's look at the technologies and companies working in this area. 
5. Friend Of A Friend: Guanxi and the need for introductions. Instant friending isn't for everyone. Mobile, VoIM, and social apps designed in the West are losing to services where a third-person introduces and guides two people from strangers into relationship.
6. What mobile collaboration learns from war. Emergency medicine improves with each war; so does mobile communications, collaboration, coordination, and control. What have we learned from the last five years?
7. Handicapping the race to talkify the web. Odds-on favorites? Dark horses?
8. From asynch to synch. Blurring voice messaging, voice mail and live talk.
9. Undermining WebEx. Who is disrupting the leading seller of collaboration, conferencing, and other meeting services? Who is cheaper, faster, easier, and more fun? How is Cisco changing WebEx in response?
10. Real world Mobile Net Neutrality. Should your carrier limit citizen access to the Internet based on content? Based on device? Based on carrier's competitive interests? Let's hear from Deutsche Telekom and AT&T, from Skype and Google.
11. Running out of mobile bandwidth. Has demand for mobile data outstripped world and local supplies of capital to build out the data infrastructure? Are there regulatory hurdles? With today's capital markets, where is the money coming from to pay for the buildout?
12. Rural Stimulus. Who got government money to build access to the Internet? Is it being spent wisely?

tags: skype, ecomm, conference, emerging, communications

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Power, Freedom And Money: Skype, Apple, and the Carriers

Power, Freedom And Money

View more presentations from evanwolf.

My thoughts on Skype's political strategy at CTIA 2009. It builds on my Monday post, Apple, AT&T hobble Skype for iPhone 3 Ways (Skype Journal), Robert Miller's Is Deutsche Telekom playing an April's Fool joke at the expense of Skype users in Germany? (Skype), Rob Topolski's AT&T Quietly Updates its Wireless Plans (Public Knowledge), Lesley Cauley's Skype's iPhone limits irk some consumer advocates (USA Today).

Maybe a three minute read, flip quickly Lessig style.

del.icio.us tags: skype, apple, iphone, att, regulation, carterfone.

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype for Vampires: Making the business case

[Editor: From an internal report.]

Is there a market?

There is clearly an underserved market with different needs.

Can Skype serve that market?

Vampires use phones. Here are some shots of Bill pulling a mobile from his pocket in True Blood, Season 2 Episode 1. Stands to reason that if they talk and use phones, they could use Skype.

Will these users spread Skype faster than the Skype average?

Vampires are persuasive.

With so many still in-the-coffin, they value trusted and private connections. Like other underground subcultures, tools that help them stay connected help them survive.

Will this segment use Skype more than average?

We don't know. We suspect most of their communications are short, frequent, and bursty vs. long, occasional, and regular. The challenge will be to uncover sub-subcultures and patterns of use within the vampire communities.

Will this improve our brand?

Skype's brand is so happy, cheerful, laughing, blue skies. A hint of smoke, a touch of dark, might make Skype a more vivid, cutting brand.

How will rivals respond?

Microsoft: Ballmer will re-launch Live.com by buying and launching Dead.com. 

Google: Android and iPhone apps that blend Wave and Maps with GPS to find the nearest blood banks, Trublood retailers, vampire bars, graveyards, and college campuses. Starting with Stanford. 

AT&T: Lawyers and lobbyists to criminalize VoIP (Vampire over Internet Protocol).

Deutsche Telekom: New fees for calls to dead people.

What's the cheapest way to test our assumptions?

We tried focus groups, but we kept getting goths from Whitby.

We tried ethnographers to live among vampires and report their behavior, but they kept getting turned. or disappeared.

Maybe we should just put something out there and see what happens?

tags: skype, s4v, vampires, skype for vampires, branding, strategy

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Trueblood photo credit: copyright HBO.

Time: a Skype Red Software Design Challenge

Skype for Vampires is Time Aware.

Making the most of every night is not enough. Vampires want to make the most of every day too.

German Skype partner PamConsult announced Pamela V software that turns on automatic voice mail and IM attendants before dawn. You never need to miss a daylight message from humans or from vampires in other time zones.

A new clock counts down the minutes until dawn, with alerts at the –60 and –30 minute marks. For early risers, the clock also reports the wait until dark.

Because sunrise and sunset times depend on longitude, Skype now gathers location information from IP addresses on laptops and desktops and more accurate GPS data for S4V Mobile users.

Five Digit Years

S4V resolve bugs that bothered vampire Skypers for years. Skype now holds birth dates going back 100,000 years. The big change was changing age in profiles to support five digits, complying with IETF RFC 2550.

Still on the wishlist: Century. Many senior vampires were raised in eras when calendar dates were less standardized and education less common. You should be able to pick your origin century as an alternative to Julian calendars dates.

Skype restores birthday alerts. Adds death day alerts.

The first release of Skype for Windows 4 left out contact birthday reminders. Skype for Vampires restores them. Skype added two new fields to profiles. First Death Date is your date of conversion to vampire status, or a rebirth as some call it. Last Death Date is when you are really, truly, completely dead. So now Skype helps you celebrate two lifecycle milestones with your friends.

Last death date turns out to be very useful in managing your relationships but hard to get people to fill out.

tags: skype, s4v, skype for vampires, skypeforvampires, pamconsult, time, years, centuries, ui, ue, ux, vampire, vampires, skypered

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype Red: The Hardware Story

Skype for Vampires creates new opportunities for Skype's hardware partners. As with any (in)human factors design, Skype certifies gear to meet the particular needs of its demanding customers.

Skype's Jonathan Christensen said the new certification standards inspired hardware to use every drop of power in Skype's SILK and NYLON Superhuman Wideband Codecs. "Our partners, like Logitech, Panasonic, Toshiba and Sony, are creating a Skype call fidelity so high you can mesmerize humans as though you were in the same room."

Different Abilities	Technical Response	Products Upgraded
Heightened Vision	High frame rates Higher resolution Wide spectrum (into the infrared) Higher color depth	Webcams Displays NYLON lossless video compression
Visual Sensitivity	Filtering out frequencies found in sunlight that trigger allergic reactions	NYLON codec
Heightened Hearing	Higher audio frequency response range and sensitivity Noise reduction to drown out distracting sounds picked up with sensitive ears	Microphones Speakers

Logitech webcam, Vampire Red edition. Certified for Skype for Vampires.

tags: skype, vampires, skype4vampires, logitech, panasonic, toshiba, sony, fun

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Slides from the Skype iPhone press conference

Scott Durschlag presenting at CTIA Mobile 2009 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. A nice mix of

• Skype rhetoric (enabling conversation, Skype everywhere, person centric vs. network or device centric),
• dazzling numbers (kabillions of minutes served, a million new users every three days, the next 100 million users are in China),
• some product stuff (Skype for iPhone number one download in markets around the world, Skype Lite for Blackberry coming in May)
• ended with a pitch to carriers. Dear Mobile Carriers, we're here, we're staying, we're growing, partner with us.

Skype Alien stalks reporters

The reporters, queued for yesterday's Skype press conference, are more interesting. than the circus performer. Blasé, reflexive shutterbugs, won't interrupt conversations despite looming monster, while others pose for portraits. 

Technorati tags: skype, pr, publicity, clown, circus

Skype Red: Ground Penetrating Wi-Fi

Just because you're dormant doesn't mean you're offline. New advances in Ground Penetrating Wi-Fi (802.11gp) let your mobile phone or laptop stay connected to Skype and the rest of the Internet while you're six feet under. Your persistent Skype chats and voice mails will be all queued for you at dusk.

Cemeteries are a growing market for Skype partners Linksys, Cisco, and others making routers supporting the new technology. The gold standard is the D-Link Red, above, able to deliver 100Mbps two meters under soil at a distance of 25 meters.

Coffin makers are also equipping their products with batteries and uninterruptable power supplies. Laptop and smartphone batteries still have trouble making it from sunrise to sunset without a charge.

Cemeteries are racing to zone plots with Wi-Fi coverage, hoping to charge tenants a premium.

On the down side, privacy advocates urge caution, warning most graveyards have lax security, even online. 

cc-by: TheeErin

The Social Vampire: A Skype Red Design Challenge

When vampires tweet, follow, friend, and bite

Vampires vary more than humans in the degree of social connectedness and styles of social interaction. Skype for Vampires brings several features built on their social behavior.

Groups in Groups. Groups of vampires are called different things in different countries and subcultures. Depending on size and strength of ties, they have been called nests, clans, families, tribes. Skype "contact categories" now let you nest contact categories.

Unflattening Social Graphs. Skype contact groups are flat and democratic, unlike pecking orders among vampires. S4V lets you define hierarchy within contact groups. So you know who's the master.

Instant Cabal. A Skype preference automatically form groups by clan/bloodline affiliation. This can be a big time saver and better models real vampire-vampire relationships.

People Rank. S4V can sort your contacts using bloodline social proximity calculations. Social proximity shows how close you are to someone within a social graph, answering the questions "how many contacts do you share?" "how strong/active are those connections?" LinkedIn shows social proximity in a business context; Skype in the vampiric context. 

My Vampire(s). With a nod to twitter, Skype now lets non-vampires "follow" a vampire, and a vampire "claim" a non-vampire. Vampire affiliation and custody of non-vampires now shows up in search and search results, profiles, and automatic contact lists. Unclaimed humans can set their profile to the "BiteMe!" option in the My Species field.

Dating. Skype partnered with Lovebitten, a portal partnership for interspecies dating. The bitecurious can launch Skype chats and voice/video calls from the Lovebitten site. 

tags: lovebitten, bitecurious, biteme, skype, sociology, social, linkedin, twitter

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype averages 150k concurrent voice/video calls

Skype reported 20 billion minutes of Skype-to-Skype and Skype-to-PSTN calling in 2008-Q4. With 131k minutes in a quarter, that means Skype averages 152,625 active person-minutes at any given time.

The 20 billion figure counts two people in a one minute Skype call as two minutes.

I'm assuming this included minutes from mobile callers.

Skype Red: The Skype name origin

You've heard several stories about how Skype's founding team conjured the name. A Chuvash word meaning "the whole word can talk for free." Short for "Sky peer-to-peer."

Now for the simpler truth.

skype is the sound of a vampire bite.

Two teeth
sliding into warm flesh
lips surrounding the wound

Which founders knew this?

We're not telling.

Technorati tags: skype, vampires, skypeforvampires, s4v, bite, teeth, origin

Skype for Vampires – Top 5 wishlist

5. Video: Sparkle correction.

"I brake for vampires who sparkle"

— bumper sticker

I keep getting requests for help with webcams from those few vampires who tolerate daylight and who glow brightly in full spectrum sunlight. I don't know if this is a request for Skype Certified webcams, for Skype partner On2 which makes most of Skype's video codecs, or for Skype itself with its NYLON and DUSK supernatural wideband codecs. 

4. Video: Blood filter.

A few drops on the collar can put people off. So please remove blood on the face, or the walls.

3. Blood Sounds.

What the Skype acoustic palette sounds like to people without supernaturally enhanced hearing

Skype already makes that great "blood droplet dripping into a pool" sound. How about the sounds of blood splashing? The cap coming off a bottle of Trublood? The beep of a microwave after warming some Trublood to body temp? During file transfer, how about a throbbing pulse?

2. Video: Coppertone® Suntan filter.

"Can you make us look less pale?" If you can add a golden or tan skin tone in Photoshop, why can't Skype give us a golden skin tone?

1. Emoticons.

New vampire emoticons, please!

 

Bonus: Extend the promotion of free Skype credits with Trublood purchase. The word is still bleeding out.

tags: skype, video, coppertone, emoticons, vampires, skypeforvampires, s4v, trublood, trueblood

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype for Vampires: New Emoticons

Skype's designers had a unique brief: enrich Skype IM conversation for vampires. Notes from the original design specification:

Title

vampire IM emoticons

Short Summary

We're building an IM product for vampires. One visual element are the emoticons vampires might use in ordinary conversation. We're looking for a few, well crafted emoticons in small size and larger display size.

Description

User Considerations:

• vampires are real, having coming out of the coffin in 2006;
• vampires drink TruBlood, the product featured on the HBO show;
• vampires vary in age from teenager to ancient (think centuries); 
• vampires are social with tribes, territory, and "bloodlines". 
• vampires, like Skype, are global with social connections that cross national borders.

Emoticons used for feelings are typically derived from the smiley face.

Potential emoticons from our Thursday brainstorming session (and we're open if you have other suggestions):

• Vampire, V''''V
• Thirsty
• Bite
• Smiley Fang
• Blood
• Garlic
• TruBlood bottle (first emoticon product placement, see http://www.trubeverage.com/)
• TruBlood Type O - hearty and satisfying
• TruBlood Type A - light and delicate
• TruBlood Type B - aggressive and energizing
• TruBlood Type AB - smooth and refined
• Plasma (weak blood)
• Stake
• Holy Water (H2O with a halo)
• Sunrise (when we go to sleep)
• Sun Glasses
• Sun Block (SPF-1000)
• Toothbrush, dental floss
• Sunset (when we get up)
• Sire (the vampire that brought you over)
• vampire, Vampiir (eesti spelling) ,veripard, vere-imeja
• Coffin/Sleep

What I Want

• Be consistent with our Skype emoticon library(http://www.skype.com/allfeatures/emoticons/), not Yahoo!'s or Microsoft's or QQ's. 
• Files for each emoticon, on white background
• Skype's emoticon size is 19x19px.
• Bonus points if you have time or imagination for animated versions for one or more. 
• Character. This is for the everyday use by millions of people, so it better have heart. A bleeding, pulsing heart. Have fun, show the gist.
• Gender Balance.

What I Don't Want

• Too cute. Put on your Skype design hat; you don't want to belittle or offend our vampire customers or employees. 

Prior art:

• A Yahoo! style emoticon.
  
• 3-D treatments
   

tags: skype, emoticons, s4v, skypeforvampires, design, ui, ue, ux, smileys, trublood, trueblood, bloodtype, branding

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Vampire Identity: a Skype Red Software Design Challenge

Skype for Vampires offers the first Vampire-Ready Digital Identity System

Along with Skype for Vampires comes a new ID system, reflecting deep research into vampire market needs.

Multiple Pseudonyms, Persistent Identity. As you might imagine, vampires may wish to remain closeted. S4V now lets you define multiple aliases. You can apply aliases to individual contacts and contact groups. Your core digital identity should last as you shed aliases over the decades.

My Species. Each alias may have its own species indicators. You can choose from Human, Vampire, Dhampir, Werewolf, Pixie, Decline To State, BiteMe! We can only guess what  BiteMe! presence means.

Profile attribute: MyType™. Vampires can share their personal tastes using the common ABO blood group system (A, B, AB, O). Humans will be able to share their blood types in their profiles. You will be able to search the Skype directory for people according to MyType.

Real Vampire™. Is this contact really undead? Skype partnered with the American Vampire League to certify Skypers users as AVL members in good standing. Building on technologies like OpenID and OAuth, this is Skype's second use of third-party authentication after its MySpaceIM partnership. They are promoting VoID, the Vampires over Open ID protocol.

These features should also be useful to humans. We all want to share ourselves differently with different people, applying the appropriate social context. Your boss shouldn't know you hang out at vampire bars, your bloody friends shouldn't know you go to church, and your church committee shouldn't know how you voted. Skype now makes that possible.

See also:

• Your MySpaceIM account dies when you do. Skype Journal, 2007.
• WhoAmI - A Web2.0 Platform for Faceted Identity Management through Aggregation of Social Media. Stephan Baumann, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
• Faceted Id/entity: Managing representation in a digital world, danah boyd's thesis on contextualization of identity.

tags: skype, skypejournal, bloodtype, realvampire, mytype, myspecies, biteme, vampire, dhampir, werewolf, pixie, presence, aliases, facedtedidentity, identity, id, trublood, trueblood

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Mobile Skype for Vampires

From the product pitch: "We'll bundle apps for the market to sweeten the attraction of mobile Skype for Vampires."

tags: skype, vampires, mobile, location, skypeforvampires, skype4vampires, s4v

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Vampires work Skype's graveyard shift

Like many companies, Skype learned trusted, valued employees were vampires. Gilles Annespie, HR director, affirmed Skype's commitment to workforce diversity and equal opportunity extended to all employees, even the undead.

 
Vampire-ready jobs are tagged "graveyardshift" on the Skype jobs blog.

Embracing change. Workshops at Skype offices helped employees who wanted to "come out of the coffin" to their colleagues. "Beyond the normal anxieties of people acknowledging something new, we wanted to deal constructively with change" said Annespie.

"Some of our best developers worked late and missed meetings. Now we know why" said a Tallinn team leader. Half the quality assurance team came out at the evening sessions. "It's the focused, ruthless pursuit of bugs that makes them so good. That's why we're pretty sure most of our private beta testers are vampires too."

To become a more vampire-friendly workplace, Skype's bigger offices turned a few wire closets into emergency sleep spaces. The light-proof "day bunks" have beanbags, locks from the inside, atomic clocks, and wi-fi. All Skype offices are now open around the clock. Refrigerators in every lounge stock Trublood in all the popular types.

Staffing up. Skype actively recruits vampire programmers, both for its staff and for its third-party developer program. Skype named Bertoine Antout Manager of Vampire Community Relations. The team will host VampDevCamp, an unconference for undead hackers at Skype House London on 31 October 2009. 

Miller Roberts, Skype's general counsel, said it was hard extending health, disability, and life insurance to vampires. Coverage used to end with death. Skype's legal affairs team rewrote contracts with more than forty insurers, in a dozen countries, to cover all current and future undead employees within the first 30 days.

Some paychecks were briefly stopped during the transition when newly added "first death" dates were added to legacy payroll software. 

tags: skype, vampires, hr, payroll, skypeforvampires, s4v, skype4vampires, graveyardshift, trublood, trueblood

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.