I'm reading the SkypeWeb Partner white paper with a jaundiced yawn. There is simply nothing new here. Oh some language tweaks provide localization for the display language. Beyond that nothing. Nothing we, the Jyve guys and others didn't talk about and begin prototyping almost two years ago.

Skype has chosen to centralize delivery of presence rather than providing a presence server on every desktop. This means you can't be selective with sharing your presence information while enabling presence, and thus makes it availabe to all. At the moment it appears to refresh quickly with a status change. So, if you know my Skype ID and I have enabled my presence info, you can check my status at anytime. You can also, without my authorization, put it on your webpage.

My status Skype VP Skype Manager Skype Boss

Note: Skype doesn't yet send an accurate status when logging off or when closed down. There is also no status for Call Forward active (which may or maynot be wanted).

There is nothing (bar decency) to stop anyone looking up every Skype employee and creating an online/offline availablity monitor. Of course such a directory set to refresh every few minutes may along with others put some strain on the presence system. The point is, when you put your presence information out there using Skype's approach, you have lost control of it. You have given it away free to be used by anyone. That's a lost economic opportunity. My presence, like my attention, is valuable and Skype's solution makes a mockery of it. Companies will just use this as another reason to source another solution.

Thus Skype has given away the opportunity to create a permission based presence system and also given up an income earning opportunity. Concurrently with the launch of SkypeWeb, Skype has failed to develop a workable channel for sharing temporary presence and access.

Sharing presence via SkypeWeb is very different to sharing presence with a few trusted sites. Example. I want to share my presence with my favorite social network, a business network, at work and perhaps in a familiy directory. There is no reason I should enable a call center to search Skype, check status and then ring me. Except that is exactly what is now available. Examples above presenting Skype employees online status. If they don't like it the only thing they can do is stop sharing.

To say it yet another way, Skype has missed yet another opportunity to share presence in a way that moves the game forward. As access to it is free rather than restricted, Skype doesn't act as an agent or broker my presence. I can't instruct Skype to only share my presence with www.skypejounnal.com etc. As a result Skype presence availablity won't help with aliases or with limited sharing of my presence and attention data.

If I'm missing something let me know.