The day after Christmas I was driving south from central Oregon on my way to Mount Shasta...

I stopped by the Klamath Falls RadioShack store. K Falls is a small community of about 20 thousand people just north of the California-Oregon border. They only have one RadioShack store but eight people in different parts of town were able to point me in the right direction.

I asked the friendly staff if they had any Skype stuff. I had to spell it ("s-k-y-p-e") and they looked it up on the computer, pointing to a U.S. Cellular display on the right.

Looking a little closer, wading through mobiles and accessories, ...

I found five shiny foil bags.

No other Skype merchandise with the Skype gift packs, now back up to their MSRP of US$9.99. Was told there was a phone that worked with Skype over in the networking section...

with the LAN and wifi gear.

It was the VoIP Voice CyberphoneK, decorated with the Skype Certified logo. Just one of the four Skype cobranded products stocked by RadioShack.

I've had similar experiences in smaller and larger RadioShack stores in California. It's hard to launch a new category and brand, especially with seasonal staff and the holiday sales frenzy. Two months in, most RadioShack employees don't have much (any?) Skype brand awareness, talking points, or merchandising direction. Assuming sales were adequate this month, Skype wil stick around and this will change.

RadioShack is a great place for Skype to start retailing in the United States. Only Wal-Mart sells more (38% of "mobile phones sold in major U.S. retail outlets and consumer electronic stories in the last six months") than RadioShack (28%). While the carrier-owned stores sell nearly half of all mobile phones, their customer satisfaction is horrible (24% positive). Good experiences at RadioShack should make it easier for Skype to open doors at other retailers, all of whom will be at CES next week. See you there.

Skype in Tallinn is probably out drinking with Henry Gomez right now. He is excited about his role as Skype's leader of North America.

Henry Gomez showing off Sype's North American Headquarters, his cubicle at eBay's San Jose offices.

His goal for next year? Make Skype a household name in North America, but especially in the United States.

What can one man do?

From Get Skype to Join Skype. Hank retells the story of the great eBay outage of 1999. The founders gave 500 customer names to each eBay employee. They shut down operations for a week to call every customer, to apologize, and to listen. eBay can not only share that level of customer commitment with the Skype family, they can bring their formal methods - like training, the Pink teams, their forum moderation - to NorthAm. The broad mass of Skype users haven't flocked around shared interests and news formed, so there is much for Skype to do.

Buy Skype Here. Retailing is not just a holiday strategy. It connects brand awareness with the opportunity to act, in familiar surroundings. Watch as Skype continues rolling out retail distribution of Skype samplers (the branded impulse buy) and Skype certfied product (license revenue). What started in the U.S. with RadioShack and Brightpoint can, with a short track record, expand to the electronics superchains, WiFi hotspot operators and other touchpoints where people buy computers, telephony, and accessories. For millions, their first Skype experience will be a gift pack or a merchandise display.

Skype inside. NorthAm BizDev will have a role in bundling Skype offers and products with other goods and services. I can't wait for the Skype2 video to become a compelling product (not even close at the moment) so all the consumer products companies that make you look and sound good can jump in. Henry is not responsible for engineering, but he will be driving many of these kinds of alliances.

eBayers, this is Skype. Watch too for the NorthAm-centric PayPal and eBay to gradually expose their customers to the Skype identity network (Skype names, authentication, credits) and Skype presence (SkypeMe buttons). Skype names, especially one-off names, carry less personal risk and exposure than giving out your email address and phone number. As the eBay community brings itself into the Skype cloud, each will have a chance to bring their own personal and workplace social networks into Skype. With maybe 400k active NorthAm ebayers, this should be good for at least 2-4 million more local registrations.

Marcom Classic. And then there is traditional marketing communcations. Some are inexpensive, like sophisticated media relations; Skype is still a new name and VoIP a new idea to most tech columnists in the U.S.. Skype has yet to register for product placements in Hollywood, television and game productions. Is it too early for television commercials? How about online advertising? Can Skype afford the heavy ad budgets of AOL, Earthlink, Yahoo!, Microsoft, or eBay?

Of course Mr. Gomez won't do this on his own. He is staffing a new organization to execute on this charter. And you can be sure they won't fit in his cube.

Most conferences are lovefests, fraught with groupthink. Not this one. Jeff Pulver brings combatants together. He exploits the tension between telecom upstarts vs. incumbents, regulators vs. entrepreneurs, industry vs. academe. It's dramatic (if you don't mind the language of lawyers and lobbyists). If I'm lucky, I'll understand a little more of the conflicting interests, the rhetoric, and their awareness and understanding of Skype.

If anyone wants to grab a coffee, beer or meal on Friday, call/skype/email me.

Web Site Developer

Description: MSI is in the process of creating a live, interactive distance learning webcast. This webcast will connect marine science instructors from our ship on San Francisco Bay with virtually any school, any class in the world. We are looking for a volunteer to help us design and develop a website that will host the webcast. Most notably we would like the site will have a QuickTime window and Skype VoIP imbedded within it.

Great opportunity for anyone looking to add a cool website to their portfolio/resume. This opportunity can be completed from both our offices or as a virtual opportunity.

Required Skills: Technical Web Development knowledge required. Access to and knowledge of Dreamweaver or similar software would be great.

Organization: Marine Science Institute
Location: 500 Discovery Parkway, Redwood City, CA 94063
Categories: Children & Youth, Computers & Technology, Environment