• Uri L. on Does Skype eat its children?

  Question:

  could it be that Skype is actually imitating the "screw and dump" practise?

  
  "Screw" - they made love with developers as long as they needed it to breed their product and create a unique unmatched platform

  "Dump" - when they ame to the point where this relationship has to be cut or minimised - they simply dump their lovers.

  
  It's natural after all...talking from a single man point of view :)
  

• Jean Mercier on Does Skype eat its children?

  To "anon":

  If Skype continues like it is doing on the Forum, they will let you test the beta's, even if you are criticising them.

  On the forum they allow people to "promote" competing products, so why wouldn't they allow you to criticise their policy?

  If they do take "revenge" by dissalowing you to test the beta's this will somehow affect their "openess reputation".

  My humble opinion ... but you are free to stay anonymous!

  If they

• anon on Does Skype eat its children?

  > Adam

  I signed anon for now I would like to keep getting the betas, I continue to use skype as a user. My issue is I have spent a few £k on a building a product which I might as well spent down the pub. Lesson learned was just because other companies have embraced there third party vendors, does not mean that all will. I assume you just a user and have not built any third party add-on or spent any money doing so ?

  One other comment was this issue of not using the Skype in your URL. This to me was totally crazy, I understood there issue, however all they had to do was put in a "accredited by Skype" and then part of that you could use the name.

  Thinking about it now, of course Niklas was going to do this - it makes commercial sense ... if I was as rich as him I would be doing the same! :-)

  Anon
  

• Jean Mercier on Does Skype eat its children?

  "Is Skype eating its children?"
  OK, Bill, Adam and even "Anon", i agree.
  I use for instance the outlook plugin from S3VEN or "Sylvain", it suits my needs, but instead of letting competition go with the plugin of Peter Kalmström (with a lot of respect for Peter - good work), they are killing Sylvain by giving Peter all the honours!

  OK ... if this is their long term business plan, i guess they will make some developer people unhappy!

• U. Yogeswaran on Does Skype eat its children?

  Hi, most poeople will prefer the services by skype other than third parties, 'coz it will be convenient, no need to install extra softwares too.

• GLADIATOR on Does Skype eat its children?

  Anon quote:
  "I have the new beta and its all in there"

  How does some one get a copy of SKYPES beta versions? Whats exactly new and all in there?

  Why sign anonymously, if you really have some thing to say, why not do so openly.

  From my side your posts sounds like a crying child. I know of nothing that SKYPE released that wasn't expected, rumoured or just pure waiting for the inevitable.

• Adam on Does Skype eat its children?

  I think the above comments are valid. What counts is perception. That is how we perceive it. Example: Skype PR showed some brief interest in Africa. We even spent our time and money and consulted numerous VIPs and potential end users in Africa and got their feedback and ideas. Presented the results to Skype. Then it went silent. Then it was postponed after we inquired again. Then nothing.

  Similar experience with privacy and security concerns which our readers raised. The ball always stopped with correspondence in the Skype PR court after trying to fob us off without addressing the issues. In the end it stopped there permanently even after we were promised an interview to resolve those issues. Now we have lost complete interest in the subject as a result of our unappreciated efforts. To rub salt into wounds, our journalists and PR had offered to assist Skype with PR, and were told there are no openings. Then we find countless new names around the UK working in PR. Are those people paid, and paid UK wages? What do they do that our people couldn't? We don't know. We don't even want to ask anymore.

  Now the perception around Africa is Skype does not care for the African market, "why should we help Skype to get rich." We gave Niklas ample opportunity to redress that feeling, and in spite of prompting with helpful questions, it failed terribly. Bad PR. Either existing Skype PR had not forwarded to him in advance where we're coming from: a win-win for Skype and Africa, or, he really does not care about Africa, as that is the work of others.

  Instead of looking for win-win situations, Skype seems to be creating a perception of win-lose ones. Still, I'm going to get more information over the coming few weeks and see what the real situation is, just how much the Skype COMPANY cares and what its game plan is.

  Otherwise I agree, people in many fields will shift to Google Talk simply because Google never creates a feeling of win-lose for anyone. Where that has been percieved win-lose (AFP legal case vs Google) on closer inspection, even from afar, it does not cut clearly against Google.

  That is why, imho, Google should buy up Skype and manage it. Let the technical guys there get a double pay rise and stay on, sack half the London staff and replace them with Google-philosophy. Or give them a chance to change their ways and involve their community and supporters in more ways than cyan-blue pages on the web.

• anon person on Does Skype eat its children?

  I have been building an add-on for Skype for the last few months, I find out through the grape vine that what I am building is yet another new feature that they are going to add. The companies behind some call forwarding add-ons, you need to pack up now - I have the new beta and its all in there :-( I regret working on third party apps for Skype and warn anyone other then bedroom programmers to stay away. Google Deskbar 2 has added an API, and I am hoping at a later stage Google Talk will open up its interface, I plan to move what I built for Skype over to Google Talk. In the first instance it will just work with Deskbar. I really liked Skype when it first launched and thought they could become the new IM / Chat client of choice – in my view they have made some seriously bad commercial decisions. Or have they? Are they in fact just building a company to be sold with a product that is feature rich? Maybe the company that buys them will not want third party add-ons? In my view Skype should have focused on making the IM side as great as Trillian, making the voice better, and building corporate version PBX with voice mail, call forwarding, call routing etc. They could have made a fortune from this leaving the third party developers to pick up on the consumer add-on market. Saying all of this, why now open the whole of Skype to the world? Have they realized there error of judgement and this was the only way? Is this a case of now it will be Skype against VOIP / Jabber? If it was not for the fact I know longer trust Skype not to use me as there R&D department I would be jumping up and down and building a corporate version using Skype!

• ekepler on Does Skype eat its children?

  Skype has shown nothing but contempt for the developers the are trying to cultivate. There 15 minutes of fame are up. GTALK with kill them.

• continued in the Skype Journal Comment River: 200 fresh comments

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