Skype will help its users sell and buy information and services. They are starting small with ringtones. And that's fine. This sets up the business relationships with music labels, shopping services on Skype and partner sites, accounting and billing, reporting and feedback systems. It's a chance to learn and experiment on the cheap, to become wise in the ways of helping Skypers play and shop.

Later comes selling entire songs for downloading, like Apple's iTunes. And podcasts, vlogs, videos, games.

And after that: helping Skypers trade or sell their bits to each other. My old Madonna ringtone for $.10, including the licence key and registered DRM transfer; Skype getting a penny. My mashup of samples of rat pack era songs and Italian specialty numbers to tailor your Skype client for the last season of the Sopranos.

Skype is attractive for more than its millions of active users. It's an economic magnet because users organize themselves along social networks, propagate ideas, and share information through those networks. It's one thing for people to cluster around a "place" like an Elvis memorabilia forum on eBay. It's another for you to have them on speed dial, to see their presence and moods, and to otherwise be more immediately engaged in their lives, and they in yours. I am more likely to learn of the eBay Madonna fan boards on eBay from someone I know than serendipitious discovery.

Today's Skype "ringtones" are overpriced because this is still the PC market, not the mobile market. iTunes sets the bar at $0.99 for a whole song from a nearly infinite playlist. The Warner Music deal says $1.50 for ring tones, but competitive pressure will drive those rates down. Since PCs offer many more touchpoints and contexts to sonify user experience, Skype users may see offerings for entire sound "themes" licensed directly or remixed.

The Skypenomics takeaway:

1. Ringtones teach Skype and Skypers about buying and selling, building trust.
2. Next step: buy Coldplay tracks and download them through the secure Skype file transfer, Skype getting a royalty.
3. Step after: sell my Coldplay track to my friends, Skype getting a cut.

• Knowing Skype and its competitors may earn you the Product Manager – Mobile Instant Messaging job at Verizon.
• VoIP News: Phil Wolff Talks Skypenomics at the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference includes a few highlights.
• YASP (Yet another soft phone): voipstunt.
• Chinagate-Skype, for the Chinese diaspora. Jaanus' post on the new portal partnership. Smart alliance; helping families and commerce that cross the globe stay connected.
• BT's Broadband Voice outage for a few hours this week. What uptime constitutes phone replacement?
• Nuvvo shows SkypeWeb presence for teachers and students in their learning community. Now they're waiting for SkypeWeb to be rolled into an update of Skype 2.0.
• Warner Music Group (WMG) will sell ringtones through Skype. Skype still doesn't offer the ability to tailor ringtones to a caller, a group of callers, or to the time of day/day of week. So I don't know how the whole ringtone thing is. In addition, nearly all Skypers use PCs, so they get visual cues, making ringtones less useful. For the 40% of us who use Skype in the workplace, "Like a Virgin" is sure to make us popular among our colleagues. This follows Warner's general model for licensing music samples to mobile carriers. Are these licensed to all Skype users or just to those living in countries where copyright is enforceable?

1.4 Windows Beta released.

• Free Call Forwarding
• Expressive content
• Improved Search
• Application to Application Messaging
• New API improvements
  • Application to Application Messaging
  • Skype Window Control
• Skype URI links (skype://) for email and web pages

Get it on the Skype for Windows download page.

Cautions: We've had some difficulty with promptness of presence. What do you think about the new features? The look and feel changes?

Change notes...

31.08.2005 version 1.4.0.45

• Feature: 21 new emoticons
• Feature: My Pictures: possibility to choose pictures from Expressive Content
• Feature: RingToneManager for Expressive Content of audio files
• Feature: API notifications for contactlist selection and focus
• Feature: Call forwarding
• Feature: Contextual tool tips
• Feature: Multilingual EULA
• Feature: Possibility to disable file transfer

• Change: Improved Search and AddFriend functions
• Change: Getting Started Wizard: new layout
• Change: Profile: month names are translatable
• Change: Import Contacts: new layout and process improvements
• Change: Improved Emoticons
• Change: API: Allow sending voicemail to myself
• Change: Skype client can now be maximized
• Change: New Korean translation

• Bugfix: Some optimizations during call initialization, should be a little more responsive now
• Bugfix: Import Contacts: mass authorization is back
• Bugfix: Skype does not start for some users
• Bugfix: API: support expressive content files SET RINGTONE and AVATAR
• Bugfix: API: enchance GET RINGTONE to report status
• Bugfix: Prepopulate Skype Test Call Service on new user's Contact List