Deal done. Retail VOIP in the offing? Views later.

eBay has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration.

Skype generated approximately $7 million in revenues in 2004, and the company anticipates that it will generate an estimated $60 million in revenues in 2005 and more than $200 million in 2006. For Q4-05, eBay expects the acquisition to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.01 and $0.04 respectively. For the full year 2006, eBay expects the transaction to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.04 and $0.12 respectively, with breakeven on a pro forma basis expected in the fourth quarter of 2006. On a long-term basis, eBay expects Skype operating margins could be in the range of 20% to 25%.

The acquisition is subject to various closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005.

Full text of news release...

On Skype.com:

eBay to Acquire Skype

London, September 12, 2005 – eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY; www.ebay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration. The acquisition will strengthen eBay’s global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant new monetization opportunities for the company. The deal also represents a major opportunity for Skype to advance its leadership in Internet voice communications and offer people worldwide new ways to communicate in a global online era. Skype, eBay and PayPal will create an unparalleled ecommerce and communications engine for buyers and sellers around the world.

“Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community,” said Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay. “By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net.”

Founded in 2002 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, Skype offers high-quality voice communications to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world. The Skype software is easy to download and install, and enables free calls between Skype users online. Skype’s premium services provide low-cost connectivity to traditional fixed and mobile telephones. Skype’s software also offers a robust set of features, including voicemail, instant messaging, call forwarding and conference calling. Upcoming product innovations include Skype video, expressive content such as avatars, and customized toolbars for Outlook and Internet Explorer.

One of the fastest growing companies on the Internet, Skype already has 54 million members in 225 countries and territories. Skype is currently adding approximately 150,000 users a day and has created a thriving ecosystem of products, services, developers, and affiliates. Skype is considered the market leader in virtually all countries in which it does business. In North America alone, Skype has more users and serves more voice minutes than any other Internet voice communications provider.

“Our vision for Skype has always been to build the world’s largest communications business and revolutionize the ease with which people can communicate through the Internet,” said Niklas Zennström, Skype CEO and co-founder. “We can’t think of any better platform to fulfill this vision to become the voice of the Internet than with eBay and PayPal.”

“We’re great admirers of how eBay and PayPal have simplified global ecommerce and payments,” said Janus Friis, Skype co-founder and senior vice president, strategy. “Together we feel we can really change the way that people communicate, shop and do business online.”

Zennström and Friis will remain in their current positions. Zennström will report to eBay CEO Whitman and join eBay’s senior executive team.

A Powerful Ecommerce and Communications Engine

Online shopping depends on a number of factors to function well. Communications, like payments and shipping, is a critical part of this process. Skype will streamline and improve communications between buyers and sellers as it is integrated into the eBay marketplace. Buyers will gain an easy way to talk to sellers quickly and get the information they need to buy, and sellers can more easily build relationships with customers and close sales. As a result, Skype can increase the velocity of trade on eBay, especially in categories that require more involved communications such as used cars, business and industrial equipment, and high-end collectibles.

The acquisition also enables eBay and Skype to pursue entirely new lines of business. For example, in addition to eBay’s current transaction-based fees, ecommerce communications could be monetized on a pay-per-call basis through Skype. Pay-per-call communications opens up new categories of ecommerce, especially for those sectors that depend on a lead-generation model such as personal and business services, travel, new cars, and real estate. eBay’s other shopping websites — Shopping.com, Rent.com, Marktplaats.nl and Kijiji – can also benefit from the integration of Skype.

PayPal and Skype also make a powerful combination. For example, a PayPal wallet associated with each Skype account could make it much easier for users to pay for Skype fee-based services, adding to the number of PayPal accounts and increasing payment volume.

In addition, Skype can help expand the eBay and PayPal global footprint by providing buyers and sellers in emerging ecommerce markets, such as China, India, and Russia, with a more personal way to communicate online. And consumers in markets where eBay currently has a limited presence, such as Japan and Scandinavia, can learn about eBay and PayPal through Skype. Skype can also help streamline cross-border trading and communications.

With its rapidly expanding network of users, the Skype business complements the eBay and PayPal platforms. Each business is self-reinforcing, organically bringing greater returns with each new user or transaction. The three services can also reinforce and accelerate the growth of one another, thereby increasing the value of the combined businesses. Working together, they can create an unparalleled engine for ecommerce and communications around the world.

Transaction and Financial Information

eBay will acquire all of the outstanding shares of privately-held Skype for a total up-front consideration of approximately €2.1 billion, or approximately $2.6 billion, which is comprised of $1.3 billion in cash and the value of 32.4 million shares of eBay stock, which are subject to certain restrictions on resale.

The maximum amount potentially payable under the performance-based earn-out is approximately €1.2 billion, or approximately $1.5 billion, and would be payable in cash or eBay stock, at eBay’s discretion, with an expected payment date in 2008 or 2009. Skype shareholders were offered the choice between several consideration options for their shares. Shareholders representing approximately 40% of the Skype shares chose to receive a single payment in cash and eBay stock at the close of the transaction. Shareholders representing the remaining 60% of the Skype shares chose to receive a reduced up-front payment in cash and eBay stock at the close plus potential future earn-out payments which are based on performance-based goals for active users, gross profit and revenue.

The above-mentioned dollar and eBay share amounts are approximate, based on the Euro-Dollar exchange rate and eBay’s stock price as of September 9, 2005. The final value of the stock component of the consideration may vary significantly from this estimate based on the value of eBay stock at closing.

Skype generated approximately $7 million in revenues in 2004, and the company anticipates that it will generate an estimated $60 million in revenues in 2005 and more than $200 million in 2006. For Q4-05, eBay expects the acquisition to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.01 and $0.04 respectively. For the full year 2006, eBay expects the transaction to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.04 and $0.12 respectively, with breakeven on a pro forma basis expected in the fourth quarter of 2006. On a long-term basis, eBay expects Skype operating margins could be in the range of 20% to 25%.

The acquisition is subject to various closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005.
About eBay Inc.

Founded in 1995, eBay pioneers communities built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity. eBay enables ecommerce on a local, national and international basis with an array of websites – including the eBay Marketplace, PayPal, Kijiji, Rent.com and Shopping.com – that bring together millions of buyers and sellers every day.

About Skype Technologies SA

Skype, the Global Internet Communications Company™, allows people everywhere to make free, unlimited, superior quality voice calls via its award-winning innovative peer-to-peer software for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Pocket PC platforms. Skype is available in 27 languages and is the fastest growing voice communications offering worldwide. Since its launch in August 2003, Skype has been downloaded more than 163 million times in 225 countries and territories. Fifty-four million people are registered to use Skype’s free services, with over 3 million simultaneous users on the network at any one time. Skype Technologies SA is headquartered in Luxembourg and is growing its offices in London and Estonia.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements regarding Skype and the expected impact of the acquisition of Skype on eBay’s financial results. Those statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from those discussed. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, the timing of the closing of the transaction, the possibility that the transaction may not close, the reaction of the users of Skype’s services, the future growth of Skype’s user base and public acceptance of Internet voice communication services, rapid technological changes in the Internet voice communications sector, the reaction of competitors to the transaction, global developments in the regulation of Internet voice communication services including those provided by Skype, the possibility that integration of Skype’s offerings following the transaction may be more difficult than expected, and the possibility that entry by Skype and eBay into potential new lines of business will not be successful. More information about potential factors which could affect eBay’s business and financial results is included in eBay’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004, the company’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to eBay on the date hereof, and eBay assumes no obligation to update such statements.

The eBay announcement:

***A New Way to Communicate***

I’m excited to let you know that eBay plans to acquire Skype, the leader in online voice communications.

Skype has set a new standard in online voice communications with
outstanding sound quality and unmatched ease of use. And like eBay,
Skype has a fast-growing community -- some 54 million Skype users
around the world already use their PCs to talk with one another.

And best of all, conversations between Skype users via PC are free. You
can get up and running on Skype in just a few minutes. Just go to http://www.skype.com/go/x.home to learn more and download the free Skype software application. Try it – it’s fun!

Over time, we intend to make voice communications a part of the eBay
marketplace – a huge step forward in making transactions faster and
easier, as well as bringing even more interactivity and humanity to the
eBay Community.

You can include your Skype ID in your About Me page. For now, however,
Skype links may not appear in View Item pages. We’ll be working with
you, our Community, over the next few weeks to thoughtfully work out
the details of how eBay and Skype will interact, including any policy
changes that may be required.

We expect this acquisition to be finalized soon. In the meantime, you can learn more about our Skype plans in the news release we issued just a few minutes ago.

Working together, eBay, PayPal and Skype will redefine online trade and
community. I hope you’ll join us in this exciting new chapter in eBay’s
history.

Sincerely,

Meg

Friday, September 2, 2005

FCC COORDINATING TECH AID FOR KATRINA DISASTER
Quick notes from conference call hosted by the FCC today about urgently coordinating resources and personnel from internet/wireless service providers to get communications networks up and running in in gulf states.

Lack of communications systems has been identified as a critical issue holding back aid, missing persons, law enforcement, etc. in crisis areas.

FCC personnel are working throughout the weekend to coordinate these efforts with private industry, with wireless technology groups, FEMA, and state governments in Mississippi, Louisiana, etc.

COMPANIES WITH TECH ASSETS AND/OR HUMAN RESOURCES TO DONATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS AID IN KATRINA-IMPACTED AREAS SHOULD DO THE FOLLOWING

FCC Chief of Staff Dan Gonzalez (daniel dot gonzales at fcc dot gov) says

FCC needs the following information from would be tech donors BY NOON EASTERN [GMT-5] ON SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 3.

1) identify the provider (name of your company or group)
2) identify assets you are willing to commit
3) state clearly what assets you are technologically capable of providing (IP? data? voice?)
4) what your logistical requirements are to bring that to the affected area.
5) can you bring generators? if so what size? capacity? power levels?

SUBMIT THIS INFORMATION TO

PART-15.ORG (they have an online submission form to collect this data)
or wireless@part-15.org

contacts: Michael Anderson (wireless@part-15.org) 630-466-9090, and Claudia Crowley (ccrowley at gmail dot com), 817-292-0230.

Snip from part-15.org website:

The FCC and FEMA is in a desperate need to reestablish communications in the disaster area. More specifically, the metropolitan area of New Orleans and it's surrounding areas. What can Wireless access internet service providers do to help? We can reestablish internal communications and provide connectivity to all disaster relief efforts by installing point to point, point to multipoint links, IP Web cams to assist the police and fire departments who can not be everywhere in such a large area, VoIP phones to provide voice communications to relief personnel in remote areas and many other types of normal everyday communications that most people take for granted.

To accomplish these goals, we will need not only the License Exempt Industry as a whole, but local communities, major companies, and all others that can provide even the slightest of assistance to our teams.

Link

* One of the challenges the FCC faces is fact that the coordination effort involves multiple layers of bureaucracies -- also, that there has been no central point for directing available assets offered by private industry. Participants on the call included folks from Cisco, Intel, and wireless organizations.

* Another challenge: working with FEMA and local governments to ascertain whether it is more immediately effective to get old systems up and running, or create new temporary ones. Depends on tech behind communications system in question.

* FCC reps on the conference call also said they may relax some regulations (power restrictions, etc) but are concerned that the effort be coordinated centrally, carefully, so that various emergency communications "efforts don't end up stepping on each other" and causing more of a tech mess.

* Quote from call participant Jim Duncan, Cisco Critical Infrastructure Insurance group:
"Operational issue number one is fuel and energy. Convoy accident happened today with fuel truck heading into one area... getting fuel and power in is critical, nothing can happen in terms of communications without that. Communications priorities will include law enforcement issues, but also missing persons -- getting refugees access to webpages to unite missing families... Cisco is working with Red Cross to help them figure out how to get backhaul connectivity to hundreds of tent cities they're setting up..."

* Some call participants also noted that any volunteers who end up being assigned in the affected area should bring sleeping bags, water, food so as not to strain resources. Hotel rooms, cars are hard to come by. Tech experts who end up coming to the area (by way of coordinated aid efforts) should be prepared to camp out.

* SBC and other companies are working to get voice and data service set up for refugees at the Houston Astrodome. One provider of digital TV service will also be applying its technology to text messaging tools, so that people there can reconnect with families.

* Jeffrey Citron, CEO of Vonage, says his company has been donating gear and just got a hospital back online with voice services. They've been trying to round up a large number of wireless VoIP phones to distribute to first responders.

Related Skype Journal posts:

• Skyping KatrinaHelp
• Can Communities of Interest support Katrina refugees in diaspora?
• Katrina refugee telecom problems you can solve now
• Hurricane Katrina cuts a hole in the Skype network

I just got off of a call with Angelo (awake for 90 hours in Bahrain), Dina Mehta (from Mumbai and of Skype Journal), and Anna Lisa (Amsterdam) about setting up the KatrinaHelp Team's phone service. They are working with the Saturn ham radio operators to queue and relay calls for help from around Tulane. So they're setting up a local SkypeIn number and buying some SkypeOut time, about 20 euro for now. The volunteers, many of whom are alumni of Tsunami relief efforts, will follow the sun, handing off the account as they change shifts.

Two unresolved problems so far.

SMS. They need to receive and send SMS. Text will often get through to a mobile phone where voice calls fail. And these are life and death calls for help. The volume is low, fifty to a few hundred messages a day for the next few weeks. If you can help, Skype me (evanwolf) or Skype KatrinaHelp.

Payment. The other problem is that Skype still binds each account to just one payment option, typically a credit card. So the same person who pays for this account now is responsible for topping up the account for the life of the project. This could end up being a lot of money for one person. Right now we're assuming sponsors could reimburse our volunteer, but it would be better if others could buy SkypeOut minutes and transfer them to KatrinaHelp.

This is just one project. Grassroots. Independent. More to come.

UPDATE: See the KatrinaHelp home page if you want to join in.

UPDATE: Thanks to Jaanus Kaase, the official Share Skype blogger, for SkypeOut vouchers. Nice job, Jaanus. Blog on.

UPDATE: The volunteers:

• updated their Skype installs to the latest non-beta version,
• completed their purchase of SkypeIn and SkypeOut,
• set HotKeys so they can answer calls quickly,
• recorded voice mail messages,
• worked out that they couldn't have two people logged in with the same Skype name at the same time, and used SkypeOut to call the Tulane number. It worked!

UPDATE: Jaanus Kaase: "We have eased the payment limits on KatrinaHelp account so you should have no issues making further payments."

UPDATE: Connectotel's Marcus Williamson is setting up a Skype-to-SMS bridge for KatrinaHelp.

Hurricane Katrina refugees lost more than property. They are uprooted, sheared from the close friends and hundreds of acquaintances that make the social fabric of our lives. We can help them reconnect with old roots and plant new ones.

Goal: Help people easily form "tribes" sharing common affiliations or goals.

Examples: Survivors from a neighborhood. New settlers in a town. An extended family. Schoolmates. Coworkers. Health care workers seeking certification in a new state.

Specifically: Make it simple to provide the online/offline tools that help groups form and sustain themselves:

• Phone trees.
• List serves.
• Blogs and wikis.
• Conference calls.
• Chat rooms.
• Buddy lists.
• Meetups.
• And directories so people can find and join groups.

Houston Astrodome's refugee city will be online in the next few hours. There are several telephony needs to meet.

Needed Now:

1. Letting refugees call support services and family. This could be as simple as a bank of VoIP phone booths.
   
2. Letting refugees receive calls in the stadium. More complicated, but doable.
   

1. Pager or mobile phone service at the stadium. As services are committed, families found, you must be able to locate individuals among the thousands.
   
2. Following refugees as they are relocated from the stadium. People in diaspora move across area codes and need numbers that follow the person, not the place. No roaming charges, please.
   
3. Supporting volunteers and staff working in the disaster zones and in refugee service. You want to make them productive. And you want them to stay motivated; many will be away from home for long periods. Free connectivity, telephony, videophony, conferencing, etc.
   

1. Forwarding calls made to sector phone numbers. Redirect calls to washed out home phones to new mobile or voip accounts. This provides business and home continuity amid a diaspora that has torn about homes, workplaces, schools. Crucial for personal and regional economic recovery.
   

Niklas Zennstrom, the company's co-founder, estimates that 30 per cent of its 40m users are corporate. A lot of the companies using it are small and medium-sized businesses that are saving money by doing do.

Financial Times

Firecrackers echoed down the street, through my window this evening. An early welcome to America's Independence Day weekend. The sounds of war used to celebrate, and to remember.

We weren't the first, nor the last, to fight a war for national independence. We fought to rule ourselves, a freedom from monarchy. We get to vote, organize, and lobby - to have our voices heard, to hold those we elect responsible, to cast a strong light on their work and the personnel who operate our governments. It's an imperfect arrangement, but democracy is all the rage.

When telephone networks were first rolled out, they were private affairs run by companies.

We've added government to the equation since then. To assure universal access. To compel emergency services. To break up monopolies, increase competition, keep prices affordable for the many. To protect caller privacy, fend off telemarketers, and access for the deaf.

There are many governments with a say. Cities. Counties. States. Nations. International lands. Tribal lands. Each representing the interests of their constituencies.

These often conflict with the interests of a profit-minded company.

Like Skype.

A company with users on seven continents. Beholden only to the commercial interests of its investors and executives.

Leaving government out of it for the moment, how can Skype users assert their interests?

• How might we organize?
• Do we need our own virtual town hall?
• Do we even need representative democracy or can direct democracy work?
• Do corporations have a voice, or just people who may work for/with corporations?
• How about electing directors to Skype's board after they go public?
• Need we group our voices by geography? Language? Operating system? Dominant communication mode (text, voice, video, etc.)?
• What recurring issues warrant standing bodies?
  • Security? Privacy? System health?
  • Foreign relations? With other networks? With governments?
  • Taxation and funding?
  • Development direction?
  • Certification and testing of Skype-compatible systems?
  • Accessibility?
  • Universal Access?
  • Names and Identity disputes?
  • What else?

Chat with a friend. Talking points:

1. Will Skype become as important to you as your other phones?
2. What would you miss if Skype Technologies was taken over by bad people?
3. Who can you call if you want Skype to do something?

If you record your text or audio conversations, please let us know.
Suggestions for Skype Citizen Assignments are welcome; please leave your comments.

The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, and author of "The World Is Flat, A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century," (a very good read, by the way) tells a great story in his column today "Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio? as he continues his rant on America's failure to meet foreign competition.

"I helped teach a course at Harvard last semester on globalization, and one day a student told me this story: He was part of a student-run collaboration between students in the U.S. and China. The American and Chinese students had recently started working together by using Skype, ... But what was most interesting, the student told me, was that it was the Chinese students who introduced their U.S. counterparts to Skype. And, he noted, these Chinese students were not from major cities, like Beijing, but from smaller towns."

I am sure it is not only telcos who will feel the disruptive affects of change... of Skype.

That's my thought for the day from Long Island, New York where Stuart, Phil and I are meeting to discuss our Skype strategy. "What's your Skype Strategy?" Have you given it any thought lately?

With injury, age, disease, or an accident of birth, our abilities shift from the norm. Reasonable people understand it is useful to have everyone participate in society, especially in public spaces. So we make curb cuts in sidewalks for wheelchair access. Traffic signals and elevators chirp or announce their status. We accomodate to include.

I propose Skype and the Skype developer community set a goal:

Skype accessibility for the visual and hearing impaired by Summer 2006.

Some of the challenges:

• Technical Compatibility. How well does Skype work with today's screen readers? What can we do to make it work naturally?
• Relay service. Human relay services that help the visually impaired to hear a chat (reading the chat aloud) and the hearing impaired to have voice calls transcribed in real time and video calls closed captioned in real time. Programmers: consider relay initiation.
• Captioning. When Skype introduces video calls and conferences, how will we caption video from those using sign languages?
• Controls. What features will help a blind person navigate her Skype address book, search for a Skype user, be notified of voice mail? How will this differ from computer platforms to mobile ones?
• Alerting and notification. Other tools, including many not connected to a computer, are used to notify the deaf and blind of incoming calls. How should Skype work with them?
• Other concerns. While the Skype UI is simple, it is overwhelming for some with other cognitive modes like types of attention deficit or mild autism, for others with motor disabilities, and yet for others with sensory concerns like color blindness.

There are technical and business justifications. These new features will lend themselves to other applications. The challenges will strengthen the Skype API. The accessibility will extend the market. And the programme responds to PSTN/mobile telco lobbying.

But that's not why we must do it.

We can leave no Skyper behind.

It is the right thing to do.

Today is 2005 National Teacher Day, here in the United States.

Bring Skype to School:

1. Talk with teachers in other schools about their craft.
   
2. Turn in homework. Even at the last minute.
   
3. Get help with homework. From around the world.
   
4. Conference call with experts. Even in space.
   
5. Skypecast between classes. Co-teaching.
   
6. Skypecast presentations to parents who are at work. Involvement.
   
7. Plan a PTSA meeting. Conference call/chat the agenda.
   
8. Review your school budget.
   
9. Cut your school's long distance telephone bill. Put the money to better use.
   
10. Thank your teachers.
    

What else?

• Skypers Unite! on LiveJournal.
• List of Skype-related Google Groups includes Skype in Africa, SexSkype, Skype Ebay, VoIP and Video Chat, and Skype.
• 58 Skype groups on Yahoo!

Where else do Skypers gather?

Danah Boyd asks a few questions that Stuart Henshall answers with verve. My own answers to Danah...

Danah: I’d really like to understand the excitement of social software enthusiasts. What is it about Skype that motivates you?

1. Skype engages people who believe their ears more than their eyes. Give Skype to someone in the music business. Or to a dyslexic or someone with ADD. Or to someone who listens to sports or talk radio. This is their linear, visually simple medium. Things should fit people.
2. My Skype addressbook is local. It's unmediated by a third party (unlike my AOL buddy list) and lives on the edge of the cloud, not on a server. This means my addressbook is private. It also means that software/network extensions to my addressbook can scale well and be diverse. My contacts are mine.
3. I can call anonymously. Just log out as me, log in as Mary Had A Little Lamb, and call someone. Then log out and never use that ID again. Unless they recognize my voice, I'm safe. Anonymity (or at least pseudonymity) is vital in larger communities. This assures that 911 calls are made. That whistleblowers reveal secrets. That journalists get tips. Anonymity enables individuality and civility.
4. Skype recognizes the social importance of privacy. Not only is my data kept locally, I control my profile, I control who can see when I'm available, and my conversations are encrypted from my headset to yours. IM, especially at work, is often monitored; phone calls less so. Skype creates a more trusted room in which to talk. Privacy leads to stronger community.
5. Skype moments are exposed by the software. Those user moments are your impulses to use yellow pages, white pages, caller-ID, call waiting, and file sharing. Those moments can be perceived and aided by programmers. So you will shortly be able to leverage your existing online social networks to find a relevant stranger to call, to populate your address book, to see a thorough profile of the stranger calling you (including whom you know in common), to have a side chat explaining the purpose of the call, perhaps to charge the caller for your time, or to securely share that song you're teaching them to sing over the phone. Skype informs phone calls with everything we've learned about software and the web.
6. Skype makes calls more like SMS and IM and less like One Ringy-Dingy, Two Ringy-Dingy. Multimodal, contextual, and soon with time shifting.

In short, Skype promises to bring everything I love about my TiVo to my phone.

Danah: Do you think that its popularity will be limited to specific communities?

No, but some communities will come first.

• Early adopters will be computer users. Millions of us.
• As people buy smarter phones and POTS-to-Skypenet gateways arise, everyone who has a mobile will use Skype-powered services.

If Skype was just the conversation triggered by your connection in your online community, that would be nice.

But it's more.

Skype's address book and phone logs can inform community. How about if people I Skype show up higher in my friends list, or get promoted from my fans list? What if recent frequent callers in my work-related address book show up in my intranet blog's Skyperoll?

I'll always take tacit data from user behavior over expressed content when understanding social networks. For the first time, my telephony behavior becomes useful as a sociocultural informant.

Danah: My skepticism increased dramatically when i read that Skype thinks it’s better than IM clients "Because it works!" What on earth does that mean?

It works as promised. Ummm, that's novel. Exceptional, even. Especially considering that it works over dialup, with encryption, on pretty average machines. Lots of geek cred under the hood to instantly replace hundreds of billions of dollars in telephony infrastructure with a 3 minute download, a headset, and an Internet connection.

From an industrial engineering and user experience view, they slashed the distance from thinking about calling someone to talking with that person. Skype cuts the number of tasks, clicks, typing, memorization and thinking that lead to the call. If both parties have Skype, you can even Skype me in one click.

Skype also helps with discovery. Can you imagine looking for books if Amazon only took ISBN codes? Skype's lookup works well when the other party is online. And this will only get better.

About IM, when you're talking to someone, Skype lets you IM them using its own chat client. A personal backchannel, great for passing urls back and forth.

Assuming you're running Windows, please try it. Get the feel for it. Skype me or look up someone in a far away city and just ring a stranger to say "hello, how's the weather?"

Now add beer.

Wednesday, 24 September 2003 6pm

Pacific Coast Brewing Co. 906 Washington St. (in Old Oakland, a block from 9th and Broadway) Oakland, California 94607 Yahoo! map New! Guest caller: The Skype team all the way from Denmark (2-3 in the morning Copenhagen time).

Call me at 510-444-8234 or Skype me.

Ah emerging words and phrases. I see 12349 Skype users online now and just took up TDavid on his Call Me invite. He's put into practice what John Robb said you could do yesterday. Now I understand just how simple this is to do!

I may just find the Skype logo and put it on my main blog page later. For now you can "Click n Call" Me on Skype

Several searches to this blog for Skype information, not to mention when I first looked at Skype this morning I saw 11,000+ users online which was the most I've seen online to date. And�as of the time I'm writing this there are 11,507...."
skypers (pronunciation: sky-purse) - people who call you the moment before you get out of your chair to do something else. A skype equivalent of eBay snipers. [TDavid]

Someone needs to wire this up with my mobile phone. I mean *now* not some day in the future. Here's how I see it. First a native Symbian app on the phone accesses the Bluetooth connection to a PC and streams voice each way. At 1650 bytes/sec for GSM-encoded voice, Bluetooth has more than enough bandwidth to handle it. This would allow your Symbian device to act, believe it or not, as a phone. On the PC side, a Bluetooth server sits and acts as a gateway between the serial port and the P2P voice app.

Now - I don't want the client to just be a dumb headset with a mike. I want to be able to start the app up, get access to my normal address book, choose someone I know has the same setup, and to attempt to make the call via BT. Now if the call doesn't go through, I want it to swap to a normal GSM connection and then dial that one.