It's a small Skype promotion for a good cause. The Food Network, a US cable channel, and Skype are auctioning video calls with chefs Emeril Lagasse (a charming New Orleans favorite, known for saying "let's turn things up a notch" and "Bamm!!!!") and Bobby Flay (telegenic with a tough New York attitude). Proceeds benefit a charity to fight hunger and poverty. Bid on eBay until 3 December for a 7 December call, and get some kitchen tutoring and troubleshooting before you dive into Christmas cooking.

Video is the difference, and a clue to Skype's positioning in 2007. Don Albert told me Skype is emphasizing qualitative features over price in the United States. This contrasts Skype with cable and Vonage VoIP: Skype does video, those don't. 

Darn. Now I'm hungry.

Skype moved marketing functions from countries back to London in a reorganization announced yesterday. About 40 of the 516 people working at Skype worldwide are affected, 26 of those shifting roles or locations and 14 who are leaving or who have yet to find another job at Skype or another eBay company.

Skype doubled its headcount this year, hiring 298 people since 1 January. Henry Gomez, Skype's global marketing officer, told Skype Journal the recentralization of marketing will improve message clarity, help Skype marketing move more quickly, and engage more marketing personnel in product decisions.

The 40 people affected by the reorganization were from across the company, touching all regions and departments. Skype's job site lists 17 vacancies: 8 in Tallinn, Estonia (coolest job ad word of the month: "anechoic"); 7 in London, 1 in the United States; and two elsewhere in Europe.

In separate moves, Saul Klein, former marketing executive, left Skype but continues to consult on eCommerce and advanced projects and can still be seen in the Skype London corridors. James Bilefield, former business development director and general manager for Europe, also left the company.

This is the third of three posts discussing Skype's PR management with the aim of improving the PR relationships associated with the launch of new Skype software and associated services. In the first post I outlined the problem; in the second post I proposed a proven solution; in this third post I want to review the recent Skype beta releases (3.0 for WIndows, 2.5 for Mac) and Skype's 3 Group partnering activity with respect to the proposed solution.

If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness? .... Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, 1964

One primary objective of public relations is to leverage media reporters, including bloggers, to provide an outside perspective on the subject matter of press releases, product announcements and corporate presentations at, say, industry events and to propagate corporate awareness through corporate interviews.  In turn, media reporters want to feel both sufficiently informed and experienced to have the background for providing objective, accurate and complete coverage while making assessments of the impact of a story.

Personally I prefer to report based on exposure to a product, not just a press release. I have also found interviews with senior executives (usually the CEO, one of whose roles is to be the Chief Company Salesperson) an opportunity to flesh out details that can make a more viable and credible story. I have also had a couple of executives point out that I have brought to their attention issues that they subsequently realized should be addressed in their public announcement.

Over the past two weeks we have seen four major press releases involving Skype: Skype 3.0 for Windows Beta Launch, Skype for  Windows - Business version, Skype for Mac 2.5 beta launch and Skype's participation in 3Groups' new X-Series program. The result has left behind a very mixed image of what Skype is offering and the direction it is taking. The first post in this series exposes some of this confusion; the second post proposes a cost effective solution that can help narrow, or even avoid, the confusion..

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Technology and Products

1. MobiGater GSM-to-Skype gateway, plugs into your PC, passes Skype calls to your mobile phone. Also lets you speed dial your Skype buddies from your mobile, ringing them on Skype. From Bulgaria to 20 countries

2. Accessing Skype APIs with Ruby. Pretty easy, if you know the Ruby programming language.

3. Moodgeist pinger for Linux. The better to let the universe know how you're feeling. Even if you're using Linux.

4. 10 Things to Know About Skype Ap2Ap Programming. Read this before you code. Adrian Cockroft.

5. Skype on Solaris. More Sun bloggers spread the word.

6. US Robotics' webcam. Is the 9640 cheaper (at $40) and smaller than the Logitech Fusion?

Advanced topics

1. Project San Dimas, an experimental eBay desktop, built on the Adobe Apollo platform using web services. Congrats to eBay's Alan Lewis.

2. Nokia: Hyperlinking Reality via Phones. "Nokia researchers are working on a system that allows physical objects to be identified and connected to the Internet through mobile-phone screens."

3. MashupU. Anyone from the Skype developer community available to teach at MIT, 15-16 January 2007?

4. Everything is Miscellaneous lecture. David Weinberger's speech mp3 (46:53, 22.5 MB) at the Scottish Learning Festival.

5. Cooperation Commons. Research project by the Institute for the Future and Howard Rheingold to study cooperation and collective action.

6. A Voluntarily Loosely Organized Organization. How does Skype support emergent management practices?

Business

1. Boom when UAE's Etisalat opens up to Skype? Skype Wi-Fi phone vendor Belkin is hoping UAE lifts Skype ban sooner than later.

2. Death of the phone company: "There will be a custom communications experience generated dynamically for every context, and it may be personalised for the individual communicators."

3. Death of Skype: Australian ISP: "Skype packets, in the world that we are heading to, will be able to be seen by all telcos and all telcos will have the capacity to prioritise or de-prioritise those packets."

4. ISP Xtra: No Skype shaping. Computerworld: Despite terms of service which allow it,

   Telecom's retail ISP Xtra says there is no rate-limiting for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications, contrary to reports in the media and complaints in web and Usenet forums. "Applications such as Skype can be used," Xtra spokeswoman Lenska Papich says. No traffic management is applied to Skype, she adds.

5. The future is bright .. The future is 3 .. How 3's switch to flat rates for mobile data unleashes explosive growth. Great essay, by Ajit Jaokar, about taking down the "walled garden" (controlling everything in the ecosystem) in favor of an Open Garden. via John Furrier.

6. WordPress follows SixApart and SocialText into Corporate IT. SixApart needs this: one enterprise vendor is a novelty, four is a market. See also Traction and Blogtronix. Skype may benefit from enterprise adoption of other social media like blogs and wikis if they jump on the knowledge management and collaboration memes, and further integrate Skype into blogs.

7. Ten Worst Internet Acquisitions Ever. Skype is number 9. Others: Hotmail, MySimon, BlueMountain, Lycos, Netscape, GeoCities, Excite, AOL, and Broadcast.com. A hard meme to kill.

8. The Peanut Butter Manifesto. Yahoo!'s Brad Garlinghouse rocks. Messenger's executive sponsor bets his career on focusing Yahoo!

Just off the phone (21 November 2006) with Jeff Black, ceo of TalkPlus and star of the demo I posted 13 November 2006: calling from a mobile to echo123 without a Skype client anywhere in the loop.

He confirmed:

1. TalkPlus does not use SkypeIn.
2. TalkPlus does not use SkypeOut.
3. TalkPlus does not use the Skype-operated SIP gateways now.
4. TalkPlus conversations going from a mobile to a Skype user are only encrypted in the usual Skype way from TalkPlus's servers to the Skype client.

Black said he's been to Skype's London's headquarters several times, most recently about 30 days ago. He said they fully shared what TalkPlus does and how it does it to Skype's management and technical people, right down to engineering diagrams. They continue friendly discussions. He said TalkPlus filed multiple patents which predate Skype on mobiles.

Black declined comment when asked if TalkPlus was building something for Skype.

If you'd like to chat about this, join the Skype 3.0 discussion. You can view the video of the demonstration on Revver, Vox, and Google Video.

.. in the UK at least. Today, as one partner participating in the 3 X-Series service announcement by Hutchison Whampoa's 3 Group, Skype has announced its first truly mobile offering where Skype users can make "free" Skype-to-Skype calls on a mobile phone. Starting December 1, 3 Group will launch a new flat fee mobile broadband Internet service in the UK. In the press release related to this announcement Skype CEO Niklas Zennström said:

With 3, I am very proud to say that for the first time, our users can now try out making Skype calls on the move using a mobile phone. We always want to delight our users by letting them try out new ways of keeping in touch. This is a real milestone for Skype because now you can use Skype beyond the PC, no matter where you happen to be.

CIO Now has an excellent detailed description of the impact for Skype; the key points being:

• 3 Group will launch the new X-Series service December 1 in the U.K. and roll it out to the other countries in which 3 Group operates (including Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Israel, Australia and Hong Kong) in early 2007.
• While it will be a flat-fee mobile broadband Internet service, no pricing has yet been announced.

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This is the second of three posts discussing Skype's PR management with the aim of improving the PR relationships associated with the launch of new Skype software and associated services. In the first post I outlined the problem; in this second post I am proposing a proven solution; in the third post I want to review the Skype 3.0 beta release activity with respect to the proposed solution.

Drawing from my management experience over the past couple of decades involving business public relations activities, from both a marketing and investor communications perspective, I think Skype can enhance both its market awareness and usage leveraging the enthusiasm, interests and various perspectives bloggers have the power to introduce into the market.  I have had employers who tried to ignore the need for PR (and dealt with the fallout) and others who were viewed as overly aggressive in their PR activities. But the one constant, both prior to and following the Internet's evolution as a business communications medium is that PR is about building relationships -- not only with your customers and users but also with those who have the potential to propagate the message, whether through traditional media or web-based media, such as blogging.

First three general comments:

• In the pre-Internet days, for every major software product launch at one of my previous employers, we sent out a team of product managers, executives and PR personnel to conduct individual press interviews. This took significant resources out of the office for up to two weeks. And then we had the overhead of delivering and supporting pre-release software prior to the launch such that reporters could write up their impressions based on actual experience. With VoIP and Internet-based real time communications, software distribution and feedback tools all such costs and overhead effectively go away.

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This is the first of three posts discussing Skype's PR management with the aim of improving the PR relationships associated with the launch of new Skype software and associated services. In this post I want to outline the problem; in the second to propose a proven solution:in the third post I want to review the Skype 3.0 beta release activity with respect to the proposed solution. .

If you follow the VoIP blogosphere at all, you may notice that certain products and services, when introduced, get a lot of coverage such that readers can quickly assess if there could be followup interest.  SightSpeed and TalkPlus, whose beta program launches today, are two examples; this did not happen by accident. In both cases, while bloggers are open to make their own observations there is an underlying consistency of message as to what the service provides and what are the key features. SightSpeed focuses on high quality realtime and asynchronous video communications while TalkPlus focuses on delivering a means to manage your phone number infrastructure in a manner that protects individual privacy while providing helpful business and social networking tools.

On the other hand I have done a review of various blogger posts on the Skype 3.0 Beta launch; here is the original press release and a sampling of the initial "first impressions" posts (Ed: with my bolds):

Gizomodo:

The big new feature is browser extensions for IE and Firefox that let you embed SkypeOut links into web pages. ... The re-designed toolbar, contacts and call tabs look much easier to use. And Skype also added moderated public chat features, which makes me all wistful for IRC.

Skype Numerology

Nov. 9: Skype 3.0 beta released. And indeed, the differences between the previous version 2.6.0.105 and the 3.0.0.106 are (from my point of view) quite small, see the change log.

Nov. 11: Mea Culpa: My mistake (see my post below), Skype 3.0 has indeed quite some new features, as explained on the Skype website and in Skype Journal.

Tech Crunch UK

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I shot this demonstration on Halloween, 31 October 2006, in the offices of TalkPlus in San Mateo, California. The video is uncut, no editing at all, including about five seconds in the beginning of Jeff Black, TalkPlus CEO and founder, warming up. The call is from an unaltered mobile phone. You will see the Jeff send a text message and automatically download a Java program. That app shows his Skype address book, and he clicks on Skype's echo123 acount. For those who don't know it, echo123 is one of Skype's first test accounts. It doesn't have a SkypeIn number, so you couldn't fake access by dialing a PSTN number that forwards to echo123. TalkPlus doesn't have any access to Skype's private SIP gateways. So this demo shows that TalkPlus customers can dial any Skype user by their Skype name.

It also shows that TalkPlus has engineered a server without Skype components that talks to the Skype network as if it were a Skype client using Skype's own language. It will scale to thousands of simultaneous sessions. TalkPlus has no plans to license this technology or turn it into a product. They built it to solve their customers' need to talk with millions of Skype users.

Jeff demonstrates that Skype's protocols have been reverse engineered, and shows unmet demand for a high performance, highly scalable, "headless" or "naked" Skype server.

eBay North America expands Skype buttons in seven more categories, for a total of 24 catgories.

"AuctionBytes has not seen signs of wide adoption of Skype click-to-call buttons in eBay listings."

Money talks. And eBay sellers listen.

Most I've met love being able to squeeze all their customer encounters into email and eBay forms; they really hate interruptions or wasted time. I wouldn't go so far as to call them antisocial... Most, especially those who sell part time, need to fit eBay into the rest of a busy life.

The eBay forums for Skype switched from overwhelming doubt last summer (should we or shouldn't we?) to demands for access and questions about using Skype buttons to drive sales.

As more powersellers stand up and testify that Skype buttons means cash, Skype will continue to spread at a natural, unhurried pace. It feels really slow to me, but unforced and comfortable. This may improve retention as those that adopt Skype buy-in and stick with it.

Last May Skype announced their first "free" SkypeOut promotion -namely all SkypeOut calls within North America would be free until Dec. 31, 2006. In early September Skype announced a similar program covering France. Basically, if you were not already a Skype user, you simply sign up for Skype, and all your SkypeOut calls within the designated territory are free; however, you pay normal SkypeOut rates for calls outside the designated region. And the promotions expire in just over two months, Dec. 31.

Last week Skype UK announced Talk for Britain, a new promotion that probably gives a hint of what will happen to these earlier promotions after December 31. Talk for Britain involves :

• Purchase £10 of Skype credit using PayPal or a UK-issued credit card
• Wait for up to 72 hours to confirm eligibility
• Free SkypeOut calling within UK for the subsequent six months.
• Program expires Dec. 31 for acquiring the six months free SkypeOut credit. (If you buy Dec. 31, you have free calling to June 30, 2007)
• Call Forwarded calls are not included in the promotion.

Over the past few weeks I have had several queries as the what will happen to these promotions after Dec. 31. Does Talk for Britain start to provide some clues?

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Naked Conversations co-author (with Robert Scoble) Shel Israel and American-converted-to-Canadian VC and blogger Rick Segal (and our former Microsoft evangelist when I was at Quarterdeck) are currently traveling through Europe. With an objective of learning about Europeans who have been bitten by the technology development bug, as well as about the integration of technology into European societies,. Shel is planning to write another book, Global Neighborhoods, while Rick may be seeking out new ventures that would complement current ones funded by  J.L.Albright Venture Partners.

Yesterday they met with Sten Tamkivi, Skype's 28-year-old COO learning about Skype's strategy, vision and operations.

The core of that strategy, according to Sten, is Skype 's intention to increasingly derive revenue from non-telephony services such as text, SMS and video.

"Very few VOIP services do not compare themselves to Skype." That means they are positioned to follow not lead. "Skype is more focused on staying ahead by focusing on its own opportunities," he told us..

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One of the "joys" of being a US-controlled public company is that SEC requires the breakout of International from domestic sales. So today's 3rd quarter report from eBay provides some information that allows us to look at Skype registrations coming from the U.S.

With over double the registrations from two quarters ago, it certainly demonstrates that the free SkypeOut within North America is probably helping to build some traction but Skype remains essentially a non-US business with over 84% of registrants outside the US. This is corroborated when you compare the % revenue increase with the % user increase; certainly some of the difference can be attributed to absence of revenue for SkypeOut calls within US/Canada.

The results are even more impressive when you consider there has been very limited marketing of Skype within North America - Phil has noticed some media ads in the Bay Area; there are some Skype ads on the eBay website.

These results also reveal some other interesting information:

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"WAP is Crap!"

Well, in fact it was quite good given the technology constraints it had to work within. As an implementation of the wired Web on mobile devices, it was well thought through, surprisingly effectively implemented, and funded to the gunnels.

The difficulty was that it was in general a solution to a problem the users didn't have. The power of the wired Web is the hyperlink and browsing of information. Users spend a lot of time "transaction hunting", where you decide where to put your money and attention. The wired Web is about bubbling up of important, interesting and useful information. This doesn't match the use case of the wireless Web, which is about quick hits with sites where you already have a relationship.

All this is well documented. So it's rather sad that the industry is about to go through the same harrowing learning process all over again with mobile instant messaging.

Once more, there's a well-established and successful model from the wired Internet. "Presence" as it is usually constituted grew up from the always-off world of dial-up Internet. Online rendezvous was hard, presence solved that problem. For the first time, you could have multiple conversations on the go at once. Distance didn't matter, a novelty for those separated by countries and continents. Parents and partners were excluded from this private chat world.

Mobile IM is also the solution to a crisis the user doesn't have. The buddy list reflects a closed world that doesn't match the openness of the actual tools the users prefer, namely SMS and voice. We already have a universal identifier system, the phone number. Users already manage multi-threaded conversations using SMS. The idea of the "chat window" doesn't make sense on mobile. The interruption model doesn't match, either. A new IM whilst you're browsing the web means a flashing taskbar icon and minor context change from one app to another. Mobile interruptions mean suspending real life. That's why you ask the sender to stump up a few cents to demonstrate the value of the interruption.

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I have just been asked to moderate a Round Table at the Voice 2.0 conference in Ottawa next Monday; Topic: the Future Visions for Telecom. Recently there have appeared three posts that provide a foundation for discussion of the subject:

First, James Enck, a highly respected telecom analyst and blogger, based in London, posted details of his keynote presentation last week, Ten Things I Hate About You, at Telco 2.0 in London  James has developed a strategic framework around which he sees the future of telecom:

• Telcos have lost control of their core product
• Voice is becoming a feature, not a service
• Telcos can't grasp that consumers may not want what they're being sold
• Telcos thrive on scarcity - future value will be built around abundance
• Command and control culture is dead, open API's rule
• Telco DNA is fundamentally unsuited to the current dynamics of content
• Telcos expand their footprints physically, not virtually
• Telcos can't innovate
• Telcos shouldn't try to innovate
• Maybe the entire foundation is wrong

Definitely a landmark post. So what should the foundation of telecom become? Alec Saunders presents a first anniversary update on his Voice 2.0 Manifesto:

The customer experience predicted by the Voice 2.0 Manifesto is not of a single carrier, but rather of three classes of entities - access, directory, and applications.  As a customer, you'll pay to be part of the network, you may pay for an identity (and this is an idea who's time will come, although it's hard to see today), and you'll pay for applications that that help you communicate in a diverse number of ways.  This is a very different model from the traditional, vertically integrated, communications network.

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Those handsome guys at the big CES booth in the Skype Journal banner are from a startup called YapperNut. I coulda sworn I wrote them up last January but a quick search didn't pull it up. Fresh out of Stanford engineering (some of them not even out of school), they started YapperNut to create products for Skype.

First came Amy, one of the first answering machines for Skype, and still a very nice and free program. It was the first add-in to screen incoming calls based on the caller's social proximity, leading Iotum by more than a year. Amy offered voice messaging before Skype's. Skype still doesn't have scheduled voice transmissions or office hours that direct calls to voice mail when you're sleeping, a feature Skype still doesn't have.

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Last weekend Netralia launched Version 2 of Skylook - a tool that links Skype to that ubiquitous contact management and email tool, Outlook 2000/XP/2003, and extends facets of the Skype experience to your mobile phone. In an interview with Jeremy Hague, Skylook's CEO, I learned that Skylook is rapidly becoming a key business tool for that 30% of users who use Skype in business. Key points include:

• over 60% (and rising) of Skylook licenses are known to be for business use;
• its major appeal is to hard core Skype users
• its business users have as many as 15,000 contacts in Outlook
• its US$99.95 per year per user price tag includes a 12 months 24 hour response time support warranty as well as all updates during this period

While working with Outlook, Skylook 2 also introduces audio technology for several key features, incorporates enhanced SMS messaging into Skype's Instant Messaging features and uses Skype's API's to forward voice and email messages to your mobile phone. In the image above I have "wrapped' the toolbar to show all its features. Skylook 2 offers six key functions:

• Communicate with Outlook Contacts: for instance, you can even send an SMS message to any Outlook contact, including those who do not have a Skype account, provided they have a mobile phone
• Record Skype calls (with several new features in Skylook 2.0 - the subject of a separate post - ideal for creating podcasts using Skype)
• Alerts and Forwarding: a totally new feature that will be the subject of a separate post.
• Answering Machine provides full voice mail functionality
• Archiving and organizing all your communications: emails, IM sessions, SMS activity and voice mails.
• Synchronize your Outlook and Skype Contacts.

Skylook has a more detailed outline of its functions on its web site along with links to examples of how several features work.

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By now you've read the BusinessWeek interview with Janus Friis and Om Malik's interview with Friis. The Venice Project is Friis and Zenstrom's video play. We still can't believe eBay let them build this outside of Skype. As I wrote in July, The Venice Project steals an opportunity from SkypeBay by not building video distribution into Skype's network. The whole point of Skypenomics was to bring eBay (c2c cash-for-atoms) into the intangibles economy.

21talks sees the problem when asking: "Does it mean that sharing TV content could be already available through Skype and its video functionality? At an average quality and requiring a small to medium size bandwidth. Is their next move to combine the Skype's, Kazaa's and Venice Project's networks to enhance the general quality of service of the service?" Sorry, but the few indications say no.

They are designing this new network to follow the money, fitting its rules and architecture to the special needs of the content producers and advertisers. I'm sure they won't have any problem lining up anchor tenants like television channels and movie archives for their DRM'd TV streaming network. If you want a taste of the TVP experience, sign up for a very limited Beta Test of the client.

I can only hope eBay owns a little of Baaima N.V., the Netherlands Antilles limited company doing business as The Venice Project.

During Canada's Centennial Year (1967) I was host for a student exchange with Finnish students; we have kept up contact over the past 39 years. Last week I asked one of them if s/he could translate the actual Helsingin Sanomat article reporting on their interview with Niklas Zennström (registration required) or at least give me the gist of it. Below (with minimal editorial correction of spelling and grammar)  is what my friend calls her/his "amateur translation".

The interview certainly goes well beyond the content of the Reuters summary report. (On the other hand there is nothing there that is going to impact eBay's stock price!) Note that, while my friend has been using English in both personal and business activities all these years, Skype Journal is not responsible for any mistranslation.

Of note in Niklas' comments:

• Niklas sees the future for wireless as being in WiFi (and WiMax) networks once they become more ubiquitous and more easily accessible. (reinforcing Ted Wallingford's recent comments on WiFi as the primary VoIP wireless medium)
• The issues with developing Skype for GSM or other wireless mobile phones relate to both processing power and memory issues (which translate into latency issues discussed in a post last weekend).
• He sees current rates for calls to wired lines as being the lowest we will see as someone has to pay for at least the connection.
• He only sees an explosion of mobile VoIP only once there are unlimited use fixed rate data plans available.
• The path to Skype as a ubiquitous mobile platform may be through "rebel" or "challenger" mobile operators who want to challenge the larger legacy service providers. But this is along the lines of what Andy was concluding in his recent "Being on the Inside" post.

A summary translation paragraph by paragraph goes as follows:

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[Yes, I know it's Sunday! But I started to write this up Friday.]

The past couple of weeks has seen much higher visibility for attempts to duplicate the landline long distance calling revolution generated by VoIP technology in the wireless space.

First Jajah launched Jajah Mobile at DEMO Fall 2006, where a Jajah client on your mobile phone redirects any calls starting with, say, "+" or "00" via a VoIP-enabled  backend. Your cell phone sends dialing instructions via either a SMS message or a GPRS over-the-air data service to trigger calls which bridge your phone and the called party. The beauty of this plan is that it does allow you to continue using the standard dialing algorithm; however, there can be a 20 to 30 second pause while the bridge is established. Almost simple but not all the way there. Alec Saunders provides a more detailed discussion; Russell Shaw has nine reasons why it is not a threat to neither mobile carriers nor VoIP service providers; Luca agrees; Alec rebuts.

In a trial using my Jajah-supported Nokia N70, I found that the GPRS/EDGE/3G connection worked whereas via the SMS service it did not perform satisfactorily. It does have a problem recognizing that long distance calls to within North America ("+1") should be handled via Jajah.  They have assumed a U.S.-centric model where it is probably just as cost effective to use the various fixed monthly rate all-you-can-use plans available through U.S. mobile carriers; the Canadian mobile space is one where we still pay 10 to 25 cents per minute for long distance calls outside a local calling area. With their primary focus on the U.S. market Jajah Mobile sends all North American calls via the underlying wireless service, not the Jajah Mobile backend. To correct this they need to differentiate between US and Canadian phone numbers.  (This is easily done; Skype users may note that flags associated with "+1" phone numbers differentiate between Canadian and US area codes.) Calls using the SMS connection need some more work by the Jajah people to get the software right; Alec tells me they are aware of the issue and working on it.

Another service introduced at DEMO Fall 2006, Grand Central, offers "One Number for Life" designed to aggregate all your phone activities, including voice mail, ring tones, call blocking, call redirection and call recording. Unfortunately since it's only available in certain area codes in the U.S. the economic argument only works in the U.S. However, to get two sides of the picture read the comments by Alec Saunders, Andy Abramson who thinks "it rocks"; Ken Camp and Ted Wallingford who basically remind us not to forget the basics of consumer telephony and the potential of Voice 2.0 for the sustainability of its value-add. Ted sums it up with:

We need to focus on increasing ACTUAL functionality and lose the obsession with placing band-aids on the infrastructure of yesterday in order to save a half-cent a minute, which is the basis of these firms' business models. When clients ask me about VoIP, they always bring up carrier cost savings. That may've been the case in 2001, but it's getting tougher and tougher to make that case. So I switch them off of cost savings and turn them on to new ways of thinking about communications.

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Messagr launched yesterday to help you find other people to talk to. Messagr is a new presence-based search engine. Register yourself, describe topics that interest you, and give your Skype name. When you want to discuss rugby with someone right now, messagr shows people both interested in those topics and available to talk. 

Messagr gets that value is rapidly shifting from the metered call to everything surrounding the call. In this case, bringing callers together. Unlike Jyve's focus on expert answers and consulting services, messagr aspires to all topics for everyone, a general hub for social, business, academic, and other conversation.

I like the collective interest tag cloud, updated as members change their Skype presence. Reminds me of the moodgeist experiment that aggregates Skype moodie messages. There are other sites where you tag yourself for more specific purposes. Like Ziki, where you tag yourself to manage your professional network, jobster to find work, or Consumating to "find people who don't suck." Skype Ltd. tags job postings too.  

Joel Selvadurai built messagr, now in beta, with java and jsp and the SkypeWeb presence service. A recent computer science grad from Durham University in Newcastle, Joel and his laptop can be found in the cafe of the British Library many days.

tags: skype, startup, london, uk, messagr, searchengine, search, ebay inc., skypejournal

Absent any immediate threats, and after Monday's conference call with eBay's government affairs people, San Jose State University's University Computing and Telecommunications department (SJSU UCAT) said they will not ban Skype. [correction: it was Skype's government affairs person, not eBay's, on the conference call.]

I wasn't there, but if I were briefing them, I'd be telling them about:

• Skype's value to the University's academic mission. Bringing distant guest lecturers into the classroom, helping students collaborate on projects, improving language study, helping faculty to perform research and develop curriculum, curriculum delivery, sustaining family and social ties that support students far from home.
• Skype's popularity. It's great to make people happy. Skype is a small but growing hit with both SJSU faculty and students. The UCAT office had many calls after the student newspaper's first article. And there's overwhelming popularity and demand for Skype worldwide.
• Little budget effect. Nice that it's free to get and use. Support costs are unknown. No known revenue impact (selling SkypeOut credit at the campus bookstore?)
• Configuring Skype to run through your proxy service to get through the firewall. So Skype clients deal with the firewall in a known and managed way. And so Skype's activity and effect on the network may be monitored. Or shut down, if needed. Linux FAQ. Network administrator's guide (PDF).
• Intel's pilot of an IT-friendly release of Skype. It lets the IT department create a locked-down version of the Skype client. So they could turn off the ability to use Skype's file transfer feature, for example. Or configure all Skype clients to use a campus proxy server. A promise of things to come, and a gesture that Skype is listening to enterprise network managers.

This all happened in public, with lots of nasty name calling and bother. But UCAT's initial choice may not have been reconsidered without all the attention drawn to the decision.

You invite some friends to a party at your home. While at the party, they sublet your home to strangers. You learn this after the strangers are throwing their own parties in your home and moving in, eating your food, dating your wife.

Although the plot is straight out of Madhouse (1990), I'm really talking about San José State University's network managers facing the reality of Skype adoption. In this metaphor:

• the student Skypers are the friends,

• the sublease is the Skype EULA,

• the strangers are the members of the Skype network,

• and side effects are:

  • a new thing to support without any planned budget,

  • unanticipated use of your networks,

  • unknown exposure to various risks on your master list.

This gets trickier when Skype's architecture (a blend of p2p and centralized services) isn't well understood beforehand.

Don Baker and Bob Neal are resisting proven defensive instincts. Before tossing out the scoundrels and locking the doors, they're inviting comment from campus stakeholders and building expertise by bringing an eBay/Skype person to a closed briefing on Tuesday. All the public attention doesn't make it easier to take a measured approach, so these SJSU University Computing and Telecom (UCAT) execs are showing great discipline.

If you want to learn more, and share your thoughts, Steve Sloan is hosting a discussion, open to the public, on Skype in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications (JMC). We'll be Skypecasting it too. I'll see you there.

Never wonder about the power of telephone companies. A few weeks ago Wessel van der Vyfer spoke for Telecom Namibia at the Telecoms World Africa conference on "The future prospects of the African telecoms market.. new players ... the latest strategies."

This week The Namibian's Christof Maletsky reports van der Vyfer's Telecom Namibia arranged the arrest and arraignment of five people for selling unlicensed telecom service, in this case Internet phone calls. They were operating out of three storefronts in the port city of Walvis Bay.

Jan in Malaysia comments "It makes you realise how lightly Skype got off in South Korea after it was discovered it had set up shop and was providing VoIP services without the proper licence."

Namibia's six telephones per 100 people leaves them at a competitive disadvantage. Mike at TechDirt says small countries protect their tiny telco monopolies at the expense of economic prosperity. It must be hard to trade proven cash flow for theoretical growth.

My take:

1. Everyone is doing the right thing. Students sharing how they are using Skype now. IT managers learning everything they can about the technology, its risks, and opportunities. Faculty and staff researching best practices and comparing notes.
2. Ubiquity matters. The size of the Skype network should earn it a hearing. Telling people to use other "VoIP" products like Wengo or Gizmo, as UCSB did, is like trying to convince everyone to speak in Esperanto to protect the network. As Skype rolls into 200 million users next year, you have a good shot at finding people on the network.
3. Skype builds campus Social Capital and Capacity. A university education, if you do it right, builds social skills you need as a student and depend on in the workplace. Skype is the live, real-time counterpart to blogs, wikis, email, and other social media. Skype is becoming the way to "get things done" with others, the tool of choice for communication, collaboration, and coordination. And with Skype's cumulative history of your contacts and conversations, the more you use Skype, the more effective you are at team building and putting your social networks to use. The choice isn't whether or not to use VoIM on campus; it's mastering how to make the most of it.
4. The rationale against doesn't hold water. You might make effective cases against Skype, but the three points in the proposed policy misapply the University's regulations and policies and misinterpret Skype's license and the way the technology really works.

Five updates to our Monday story by Steve Sloan:

SJSU to grill Skype Security on Tuesday. Bob Neal (the Sr. Director in charge of the networks at SJSU) wrote to a San Jose State University (SJSU) student (who promptly blogged it, of course):

Andrew, we will be having discussions with EBAY (Skype) next week. Network security is not a debatable issue. If EBAY can not resolve our issues, Skype will be banned. Several other universities, including UCSB have already banned Skype. There are several alternative VOIP systems that comply with the Universities security policies ........bob neal

SJSU ban modeled on the UC Santa Barbara Skype ban. Here's the "Skype Prohibited at UCSB" policy (modified 1/30/2006) via the UCSB Office of Information Technology Network Policy and Procedures page. The language from SJSU's proposed policy ("UCAT Operating Practices document describing the reasons and details for blocking Skype," pdf) is lifted directly from UCSB's policy.

Student calls for student action. Andrew Venegas blogs for students to call Bob Neal, passing out his campus email and direct phone number.

"Here is where I am stumped... if network security is not a debatable issue, why are any P2P applications allowed on the networks at all? It would be rather easy to transfer viruses from computer to computer across such open networks. So why ban Skype without debate on the topic? Secondly, why would the University not want student input? After all, aren't they technically student networks?"

Making the case for Skype as Instructional Technology. "Save Skype at SJSU : This is a letter to my colleagues at SJSU." Steve Sloan's points:

1. Skype and podcasting are both useful and popular.
2. Bringing guest speakers and faculty into the classroom.
3. International research and study.
4. Language learning.
5. Keeping foreign students connected with their families.

Sloan frames this choice in terms of the University's educational mission. "In my opinion this will result in our being at a competitive (not to mention technological) disadvantage compared to other institutions of higher learning when it comes to emerging technology, research and collaboration. This act has potential high visibility, given our campus's geography, with potential negative publicity, exposure and fallout. It can affect our relations with our neighbors and potential business partners in a very negative way."

Mainstream Media Catching the Story. Reporter Elise Ackerman of the Mercury News newspaper would like to speak with international students using Skype. Call her via Skype, via email, or by phone at (408) 271-3774.

tags: skype, skypejournal, sjsu, calstate, california, sanjose, sanjosestateuniversity, banning, enterprise, csu, security, web2.0, voip, voim, policy, stevesloan, soapboxprophet, andrewvenegas, blocking, education, distancelearning

Jean Mercier is our Skype Numerologist.

Skype was - in the past - proud of its viral growth. But business is business, and they try to attract people by gifts and promotions, hoping to generate more revenue through SkypeOut, SkypeIn and Skype certified products. The last two promotions in September were:

1. Free SkypeOut for France in France
2. September Giveaway for USA and Canada

For the time being this has been unsuccessful IMHO! See the graph below:

Even if MuppetMaster pretends downloads isn't a measure of the growth of Skype (and I partially agree with this), the number of downloads should have shown some acceleration if these Skype Marketing campaigns mentioned above had been successful. Indeed, a bunch of new users downloading Skype should show a change in pattern in the download curve, as it was some months ago when they launched the free SkypeOut in Canada and the USA. It doesn't: almost straight line growth since several months.

September Giveaway was targeting mainly students, and this (probably) proves again that the Skype Users are mainly adult professional users.

Skype Users seem to be also quite often small businesses. But French small business mainly have their customers in France (France is a big country), and phone calls inside France are not free but quite cheap. Belgian small business (as an example), because of the tiny size of the country, do more business abroad (in France for instance), therefore they are more interested in reducing their phone call bills.

So? Why trying to force Viral Growth? Let it grow the usual way, by improving mainly quality, reliability and services.

One of my new "Skype Customers" told me: Skype to Skype has a fantastic quality, but SkypeOut isn't that good, but it is much cheaper indeed! She phones to her family in Algeria, and lives in Belgium! Improving quality will attract more Small Businesses!

Guest blog by Steve Sloan, Information Technology Consultant, San Jose State University.

UPDATE: At the moment, Skype's status remains undetermined and unblocked on the SJSU campus. A UCAT Operating Practices document describing the reasons and details for blocking Skype. (pdf)

Skype is a peer-to-peer (p2p) voice communications, instant message and file sharing program. The recent decision to pull the plug on Skype at SJSU (has it been implemented?) may be a classic example of command and control (Web 1.0 thinking) versus collaborate and communicate (Web 2.0) technologies and principles. According to one person I spoke with in the networking department of the university's computer center, "the issue that caused the decision to kill Skype is that Skype communications are encrypted." But, other protocols like SSL, SFTP and SSH are allowed and are encrypted. These protocols could be also used to do evil things. There is no discussion I know of to block these communications and they are used a lot on our university's network. Also IPSec and Kerberos are protocols used used on the SJSU network. These protocols are also encrypted and supported by SJSU. Should we also kill them? Do we want to have to make credit card transactions in clear text?

Yes, there have been past concerns about Skype. But, these concerns may be over blown. Oxford University, which had banned Skype, in fact recently lifted its ban on Skype.

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Organized crime organizations suppress competition in a market. This keeps margins high on vice goods and services. Higher prices means overall crime rates fall, some people just can't afford vices at higher rates. Organized crime trys to avoid "wars" with rivals because they are expensive and bad for business. Big Crime also stifles small time rivals who expand the market by bidding down monopolist pricing.

In theory, police would cooperate with mafiya to keep the streets clean of petty crimes that interfere with the mafiya's business. Total crime falls because monopolists will maximize profits in a smaller market at higher prices. General law and order benefits those holding monopolies on drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other steady businesses.

But there's a greater problem. Monopolies concentrate wealth and power. This leads to corrupt government.

So we write special laws that hurt organized crime. We add penalties for large quantities of drugs. We legalize big gambling to bring it out of the underground economy, producing tax income instead of fueling crime lords. We mandate property forfeiture and allow mobster surveillance. In short, we make it more expensive to do big crime and we level the playing field. You never do away with crime altogether, but you cut the concentrated cash flow that corrupts.

Which brings me to net neutrality.

Our Martin Geddes thinks little of laws and regulations supporting net neutrality.

I've said it many times before, but Network Neutrality is a treatment for the symptoms, not the causes - and it's an ineffective anti-consumer folk remedy at that. Good intentions aren't enough. ... Picking at one tiny part of the anti-competitive edifice isn't the way forward. Better to have power over suppliers through your wallet than via politicians.

I agree. In a perfect world.

But the markets are imperfect, power is already concentrated. We see the corrupting power of the largest lobbyists in Washington D.C. and other centers of political power. We see their astroturfing and other bad acts.

So we must act.

We must effect change.

We must out-innovate and out-market.

We must organize as consumers.

We must organize as citizens. We need to educate this generation's Judge Greens, the judge who broke up Ma Bell and made the mobile revolution possible.

We must lead our society to define unmediated access to the Internet as a human right, a civil right. And to react with anger and purpose to anyone who tries to tamper with that access.    

We must find allies, if not friends, in other industries. Companies that need their bits to go untrammeled. That need an Internet without gatekeepers. Companies that know how to lobby.

Like the mafia, yakuza, or bratva, the concentrated power of the telcos will fight back.

They won't fall to any one measure. So we need a theme that All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
 -- Edmund Burkedrives many measures, new ones over time, each driving the monsters toward acceptable societal norms. Perhaps the theme is liberty and freedom?

I agree with Martin that fighting the telcos with laws is hard. Maybe impossible. And not without risk.

But doing nothing is not an option. The societal consequences of giving absolute control over public assembly, public speech, over our new libraries, encyclopedias and news sources, over our civic participation and education - this is tantamount to creating a new branch of government, one without oversight, without checks, balances or accountability.

Martin, we don't have dozens or hundreds of viable suppliers in the United States. We don't have efficient markets for Internet access. And we have damning evidence of the foul intentions of these monopolists to subvert civic freedoms and rights.

So, instead of waiting for Adam Smith's invisible hand to restore rights seized by phone and cable companies, what do you think should we do? 

P.S. Dr. Magaddino, my old economics professor, challenged me to consider crime, applying supply and demand theory to social evils instead of goods.

by Howard Chang, Amperor Direct

Dear Jim Courtney,

My name is Howard Chang, and I have always enjoyed reading your posts on the Skype Journal, especially the product reviews. Your articles have inspired me to start my own Skype accessory review blog.

For full disclosure, I work for AmperorDirect.com - an online retailer of Skype related products and accessories. Further, we are in the process of determining our level of commitment to Skype WiFi products.

This letter is a reply to your conclusions made in yesterday's "Fall VON 2006 Special - Time to Move Beyond Skype WiFi Phones" article. Specifically, I would disagree with the statement, "I have to recommend that Skype drop the concept of a dedicated Skype WiFi phone and focus their efforts on getting Skype incorporated into those other wireless platforms."

As an engineer and long-time Skype user, I can understand how you would come to such a conclusion. I, myself, would hope to have a non-PC, WiFi device that allows me to make Skype calls almost anywhere -- such as at home, work, or on the road. Based on our testing, I was a little disappointed to see that this generation of Skype WiFi phones has limited WiFi hotspot use because of their lack of support for web-based authentication. In addition, increasing the battery life and a ring tone volume would be two of my preferences as well.

However, even with my engineering concerns, as an end user I cannot wait to own this Skype WiFi phone! Why? My parents live overseas. We have talked over Skype many times before and have enjoyed the high voice quality Skype offers us. Once upon a time my parents had a hungry and demanding kid (me!) running around. In order for them to provide for me and my education, my parents learned to save whatever they could. Even after I left their house they still look for ways to keep expenses down and they consider an always-on computer as being a big waste of electricity and money. Therefore, I'm lucky if I can catch them on-line so I can call them through Skype.

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I was being interviewed for a podcast last night. As always, the purpose of the "stupid network" is to enable crazy new things, not connectivity arbitrage. The setup was that I'm in my hotel room using the woefully over-contended in-room Internet access. The caller could only record calls made using his landline phone, so he called me on my SkypeIn number.

The audio experience was OK, but about that of a typical cellular call. Not ideal for a podcast.

This does, however, provide great fodder for a "Voice 2.0"-ish story. Normally, VoIP uses the UDP protocol for media transmission. If the packet doesn't get there within 300ms, or whatever, forget it. No point in asking for reliability and re-transmission of lost data. The TCP protocol is used for signalling and other purposes where a reliable, in-sequence connection is required.

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Monday afternoon's first Fall VON 2006 plenary session, IM: The State of Presence, featuring a panel of executives and managers from the GYMAS-five representing over 90% of the IM usage worldwide:

• Dan Casey, Director, Windows Live VoIP and Messenger Product Management, Microsoft
• Jeff Bonforte, Director of Voice Product Management, Yahoo!
• Nitzan Shaer, Director, Mobile Devices, Skype
• Mike Jazayeri, Product Manager, Real Time Communications & Google Talk, Google
• Ragui Kamel, Sr. Vice President & General Manager, AOL Voice Services, America Online.

As mentioned previously Carl Ford ran his usual vibrant Q&A format, offering each member of the panel an opportunity to provide commentary on several topics surrounding IM and where it is going. It was a very informative and stimulating discussion overall. Carl's questioning covered why IM, video usage, the role of presence, mobile reach, business models and projections in for the future.

Why do users want Voice with Instant Messaging? From the students avoiding contention when sharing one phone line in a five-student apartment to business productivity enhancement, we heard stories about new scenarios enabled where IM and voice facilitate social networking to newly announced collaborative applications that share spreadsheets. Oh, and for the younger generation, IM allows students to avoid being seen holding discussions in the classroom; did I say to allow private discussion sessions in the boardroom? The new challenge arises when a group of youth want to do a conference call but Stephanie is is not on IM but at the mall shopping for new shoes.

Nitzan talked about how IM with Skype allows users to create one centralized ID that can be used across weblogs, sharing pictures, and enhancing a discussion using video.

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This is the second post in a series reviewing wireless devices in the emerging Personal Handheld Assistant space; the ultimate aim is to identify roles that Skype can play in this market of converged functionality devices. This is a special post in the series that was triggered by a VON Fall 2006 session. Links to other posts in this series are available at the end of this post.

Monday afternoon I attended the first Fall VON plenary session: IM: The State of Presence featuring a panel of executives and managers from the GYMAS-five representing over 90% of the IM usage worldwide. Carl Ford ran his usual vibrant Q&A format, offering each member of the panel an opportunity to provide commentary on several topics surrounding IM and where it is going. It was a very informative and stimulating discussion overall.

One major direction for IM is the extension of IM's access and reach by its incorporation into wireless devices. We heard about many of the issues that challenge the ability to provide seamless wireless IM clients, including login barriers, coverage and the relatively high cost of data services.

But the session confirmed a belief I had started to hold about a month ago during my evaluation of several wireless platforms. In particular, my evaluation of one Skype WiFi phone demonstrated to me the futility of providing such a device:

• The battery life was about eight to twelve hours in standby mode
• It could not handle DTMF tones
• The basic clock would arbitrarily drop a couple of hours
• It provides the presence functionality of Skype's IM client but no text chat capability
• Skype was the only application that runs on the device
• While the Skype client provides Skype names and the Contacts' other phone numbers (if available via the Contact's registration), there is no address, email or other information such as provided by synchronization with Outlook.
• They would only work in open access WiFi zones; they would not work in WiFi hotspots requiring a browser-based logon.
• They were purely engineering toys that demonstrated one could make the concept work but they badly needed an experienced wireless phone product manager to get the feature set right.
• In a market of multi-function devices in a similar price range, a Skype-dedicated device could not be price justified.

I came away with the feeling that, while they perform more or less as advertised, Skype WiFi phones are nothing more than a prototype engineering demonstration of Skype on a wireless platform.  Certainly they would have a very limited market -- maybe in enterprises that wanted to provide "walled garden" communications amongst geographically disbursed nomadic employees. But they certainly are not a wireless phone that will gain broad consumer acceptance and market share of any significance.

Combining this experience with my experience with Nokia N-series phones, the Blackberry and Skype for Mobile on the Dell Axim I have to recommend that Skype drop the concept of a dedicated Skype WiFi phone and focus their efforts on getting Skype incorporated into those other wireless platforms. (It is for this reason that I did not bother to mention which brand of Skype WiFi phone I evaluated; it's the entire product concept that is a problem.)

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Having a total time management meltdown this week: Edinburgh, Newcastle, Berlin, London, New York, Cape Cod, and Boston. So here's a tiny thought or two.

Airline magazine.

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I've been looking through the VON Boston program and don't see Skypenomics on the agenda. Nobody is talking about how Skype and its cousins continue to change the rules.

1. Skype is building Click-to-Call advertising. Online advertising is the only ad sector that continues to grow. Skype, eBay and Google are diving in to get their share. Click-to-Call isn't new, but the marketing might of Google and eBay, and their far reaching ecosystems, suggest they can deploy to millions on the web, and eventually on mobiles.
2. Skype hardware partnerships are extending Skype's brand and customer reach. Hardware is part of Skype's strategy for earning brand acceptance. Hardware is also crucial to putting Skype into homes and home offices.
3. China. Skype's biggest userbase is in China, the fastest growing broadband market, a place where more people speak English than in the United States. How many telcos and cablecos are as active globally as Skype? How many have become household brands outside their native markets?
4. Yellow Pages. PC-based search is a direct competitor to directory assistance services. This year Skype added business search to their browser toolbars and promised to add it to the Skype user directory. Their business development team continues to build alliances, country by country, with yellow page database providers. Watch browser-centric phone apps like Skype erode directory assistance revenue as Skype migrates to mobiles.
5. Payments. Skype will add person-to-person PayPal payment to its client, as shown in our banner this week and the graphic above. Skype is going to get its share of the remittance market. Again, Skype wraps conversation in commerce.

In short, Skype is

• Amplifying network effects. It's not just more is more. You can do more things with your Skype buddy list, create more social capital, than in other networks.
• Surrounding calls with value-added services. Revenue, for starters. Loyalty builders, too.

In a time of large dinosaurs everyone else is either quick or dead. Right now, Skype looks quick.

I'm having a chat this evening with a client in Califormia. We'll be using Skype. His job is at a Big Company, but it works OK for him behind the corporate firewall. When we last talked the audio quality wasn't great, so I suspect he's tunnelling out via HTTP or HTTPS via some supernode somewhere. These protocols aren't designed to carry real-time audio, and it shows.

This brings into question whether his internal telco manager is adding or subtracting value. I've had terrible experiences inside big companies using their telephony systems, because nothing integrates with my life. As an IT consultant in times past, I'd have an office landline number I had to put on my business card. I could set up the voicemail system to call me whenever I got a voicemail. Inevitibly, I then ended up with voicemails on my mobile telling me I had voicemails on my desk phone. (No, I couldn't simply forward inbound calls -- not an enabled feature, I guess to avoid paying outbound landline-to-cellular rates.) Then you turn up at a client site, and you can't even connect to their LAN. They're paying a fortune to have you there wasting your time doing dial-up via the fax line to access the information you need. It's as if it it's 1950 and everyone sits at one desk for their whole career.

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In a previous post I talked about the announcement of the Open AIM PhoneLine initiative and how, as one of their launch partnerships, they will be working with iotum to incorporate iotum's Relevance Engine call management service into AIM PhoneLine. But there is another story behind the scenes in terms of how iotum and the AOL PhoneLine API development team came together to bring about this service.

Driven initially by its military connections where Halifax, Nova Scotia is Canada's major east coast naval base as well as home to a major oceanography research center and four universities, Halifax has been a hotbed of Internet technology since the early days of ARPANet. In the late 1980's one of the navy's custom software vendors, Software Kinetics, got involved with ARPANet and ended up migrating the technology to open one of Canada's first Internet Service Providers called NSTN.  When the first national Canadian event on the commercial Internet was held in Toronto in early 1994, NSTN was the poster child for what could be accomplished over the Internet; they even had a bookstore making sales worldwide.  During the late 1990's I was consulting for Software Kinetics, visited Halifax many times and came to appreciate that Halifax was an "under-the-radar" mini-hotbed of Internet technology and innovation. So it was no surprise to me when I learned that AOL had setup their AOL PhoneLine development team in Halifax through an acquisition of InfoInteractive who had previously developed some infrastructure software for use with AOL's services.

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AOL has a long history of innovation. Initially launched as a proprietary pre-Internet personal communications platform building up to several million users via dialup connections, AOL has evolved its integration into the Internet to the point where it recently broke down its "closed garden" business model and opened up the majority of its content and services to anyone visiting their site. It has certainly gone down a bumpy road with its history of balancing the conflicting needs of innovation against the needs of an operation bureaucracy looking for a profitable business model. At one point it was the poster child for the Bubble 1.0 bust as the business world tried to work out business models to provide a profitable combination of both infrastructure services and (syndicated) content. Breaking down the walled garden is but one example of the direction it is going under new leadership.

Last week there were several posts (Aswath, GigaOm) about the closure of AOL's TotalTalk, where AOL effectively recognized there is little to gain by playing in the pure legacy telephone replacement game and has decided to abandon it. Earlier this week there were several posts (Jon Arnold, Andy Abramson, Mark Evans) discussing Vonage's latest quarterly results; the common theme is that Vonage is spending such enormous sums on customer recruitment that there is little hope of profitability in the foreseeable future. Cablecos and legacy telcos offering DSL services have a leg up as they already have a customer base to whom they can market. But Andy at VoIP Watch sums it up best when talking about the demise of AOL Total Talk in his Requiem for the Future of VoIP:

Rather than look at it as a failure, my take on this is AOL really has seen the future sooner than others. Much like the BT announcement earlier this week about their softclient, and like their other online portal player competitors including Yahoo, Google and MSN, AOL's Voice Team has seen the future of telephony and is moving in that direction with AIM PhoneLine, and the burgeoning ecosystem that already has started to bubble earlier this month at the VoIP Developer's Conference, and will likely have a big boost at VON in Boston next month.

But unlike Yahoo and MSN who have so many internal battles to fight, AOL as part of Time Warner has leadership that is smart enough to not fight a marketer (Time Warner Cable) who wants to sell a phone 1.0 replacement, and instead is focusing on Phone 2.0 and where it can be.

Today AOL issued a press release outlining their execution on the Voice 2.0 Manifesto through building an ecosystem around their AIM Triton IM client and its AIM PhoneLine service called the Open AIM PhoneLine initiative. AOL will introduce three API's this fall that will give developers and hardware partners the ability to:

• Personalize the AIM Phoneline service by adding ringback tones and unique ring tones for frequent callers.
• Enable a wide variety of USB devices such as speakerphones and phone adapters that will allow standard cordless phones to initiate and receive calls with the AIM Phoneline service.
• Build new call management functionality into the AIM Phoneline service such as context and relevance-based call handling that could treat each call on the basis of rules that use Caller ID, online presence, calendar activities and more.

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Last week Skype issued two press releases (Philips and NetGear here and Panasonic here) relating to partnerships that involve cordless Skype phones. No PC required! Just Plug-and-Call -- from anywhere in your home. Basically they comprise a base station that connects directly to your home router as a well as a cradle for the base station handset and the portable handset itself. They provide a degree of freedom that allows you to make Skype calls from anywhere within the cordless phone's radio range with minimum installation hassles. Another vendor, Ascalade, has also announced they are showing Skype Certified cordless phones at Fall VON.

Why the sudden interest in cordless phones? Well, Russell Shaw references two more cordless Skype phone announcements (US Robotics and Linksys); then he goes on to explain all this activity may result from the fact that our homes are getting larger (about 50% on average relative to 1975) and we want the flexibility, range and portability inherent to cordless phones. He goes on to point out other factors: more rooms, more air conditioning and a higher percentage of two story homes.

Garrett Smith goes on to reinforce Russell's arguments, stating that his sales data  and sales floor experience interacting with customers demonstrate that customers will pay a premium (of over $100 per handset) for the convenience:

In general, most consumers found the entire process surrounding the use of a telephone adaptor difficult to fully wrap their head around. What if I have five phones in my home (a typical telephone adaptor only allows for two phone lines)? Does this mean only two of them can use VoIP? What if I want all five phones to utilize VoIP (you need to use multiple adaptors)?

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Ken Camp makes a call to Women in VoIP to gripe about the few females at internet telephony conferences like those run by Jeff Pulver and Rich Tehrani and Tim O'Reilly.

In the last episode, the Office 2.0 conference had 53 men and 1 woman speaking. Gender imbalance? The organizer invited friends and strangers and that's how his personal network fell out. Reactions include asking speakers to step down, boycotts, the F-word. And building lists of women.

At least in the United States, women start more small businesses than men and are graduating at higher rates from high schools and engineering schools. So there is a vast pool to draw from. So if that's not the problem...

It's not about finding women speakers. It's about

• making it easy
• to find smart people
• with experience as speakers
• on a given topic,
• in a time frame,
• for a budget,
• outside your social network's event horizon,
• and selecting or deselecting for personal and professional characteristics, like religion, gender, ethnicity, and culture. (BlogHer clearly wasn't shooting for gender balance.)

Essentially, discovering the right strangers to invite to a conversation.

The world of matchmaking.

Of dating.

Of job search and recruiting.

Of Skype's people search.

They are markets of individual conversations. People offering a service and wanting a service, sharing a market. (Remind me sometime to talk about micromarket asymetry, where power is unequally shared among those who have and those who want.)

Conventions collect conversations into packages. Even open space and unconference events, where speakers are selected last minute by the attendees, fit this definition.

Secondary markets come in several forms. Convention programmers make markets for their conversation bundles (called conferences). Others show up as media, like podcasts of interviews or talk radio.

Systems which make matches efficiently (like the Monster.coms of the world) are often ineffective, making good matches. That's why some sites at least try to wrap the match in magic (Dr. Phil's advice to the lovelorn) or science (Ph.D. verified psychometric tests).

Back to women...

Diversity of thought and experience keeps markets, and conferences, vigorous. Balance proven relevance with serendipity, assuring somebody challenges your worldviews and assumptions. My favorite events leave me unsettled; perturbed from my usual orbit.

For example, I went to Blogher, a blogging conference for women (mostly). I'm in the red shirt in Hollyster's The Men of Blogher flickr set. Among other things, I was an obvious minority among 500 women, at a gathering where women's subcultures so clearly ruled. Speakers made meaning differently. It was less about painting a vision, than about sharing stories. Not so much sharing facts and observations as it was about bringing facts into the context of life experience. Not necessarily the way I blog or speak.

I'm looking forward to the Office 2.0 discussions, not this metathread about gender. More on how Skype fits into the Office 2.0 context soon.

Bill Campbell's post about Wall Street is baloney, of course. Kent says it well.

You state "Wall Street frowns on the eBay/Skype side of the partnership according to the New York Times." I read the article you linked ... it makes absolutely NO mention of the market's (i.e. Wall Street's) view of the Google/eBay/Skype collaboration.

The share prices are "factually" listed at the end of the article (without comment) ... as is customary. As for "doing the math," Google shares rose 2.0% and eBay shares rose 1.9%. The difference is statistically insignificant.

There may be a story here, but this article, and yesterday's share movement for Google and eBay, isn't it.

Investors didn't even notice the Skype side of the deal. Why would they? Any benefits won't affect eBay Inc. cash flow for years. Meanwhile, they had lots of other news to consider. For example, the advertising part of the deal, extending Google Inc.'s ad distribution onto eBay sites mirroring the previous Yahoo!-eBay arrangement, and the Google Office Suite that positions Google more clearly in opposition to Microsoft. Both bits of news would clearly have more immediate effect on valuation of the business.

As for the Click-to-Call service, there is both an opportunity and a risk. The opportunity is to create a form of paid advertising with greater merit than page views or even click throughs. Web advertisers find page views a less relevant metric than ever. But someone actually talking to a sales person, well, I have a pretty good chance of converting that lead into a customer. It's the difference between driving by a car dealership and walking in the door to speak to a hungry rep.

The risks are equally huge. Click-to-Call assumes:

1. Potential eBay and Google customers have compatible smartphone software or hardware. eBay is now rolling out Skype to its buyers and sellers, starting back in June at the eBay Live conference. But uptake by the U.S. and Canadian public is very slow. Meanwhile Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL, AT&T, Earthlink, Comcast and others are promoting their own VoIP enabled messaging clients, fragmenting the market.
2. They are willing to use PCs to talk. This is a new behavior. You can't assume customers will change their behavior in ways you approve. What percent of Skype users try voice once and never use it again?
3. Sellers are able to buy the right leads. Talk isn't cheap and margins are thin. eBay started by sheltering sellers from buyers; transactions just happened. Now sellers compete for buyers, augmenting eBay's natural traffic with their own off-eBay advertising and promotional strategies. For c2c, sellers must segment online prospects by interest in specific products. They must also decide which prospects are worth talking to. This is an auction-by-auction calculation and so far there is too little information to make an informed choice, especially for high volume sellers.
4. Sellers are able to answer callers. Most sellers aren't ready to talk to dozens or hundreds of callers a week. Some will need to set up phone-oriented CRM software, hire people or a service, and develop new call center management skills. They will learn to be agreeable and available at their callers' convenience instead of their own. These are new competencies, not lightly adopted and prone to misstep.

These are not fast, sure, or cheap to fix. But they can be managed. eBay and Skype know the problems and have started to address them. Skype education programs for eBay buyers and sellers is a start.

eBay's click-to-call service is FUDware today, the variation of vaporware that spreads fear, uncertainty and doubt among potential rivals. Nothing new for those who follow eBay financial conference calls. To get a payoff on c2c, eBay and Google will need to execute on branding Skype in the US and making the unnatural act of using your PC as a phone an everyday affair.

Jon Arnold is a Toronto-based communications consultant and IP blogger who does a weekly podcast on the Pulvermedia Podcasting Network with IP industry players. Jon and I also share in interest in the Boston Bruins, largely because he originally came from Boston and because my neighbor's son was one of the high points of what was a "down" season for the Bruins last winter. However while Jon is a dyed-in-the-wool Red Sox fan, I still maintain my loyalty to the Toronto Blue Jays when it comes to baseball. So we have our interests both outside and inside the VoIP arena.

Last week Jon invited me to participate as the guest on this week's podcast. Recorded late yesterday it turned out to be timely as a large portion of the podcast covers the Google-eBay announcement which resulted in several posts, not only on Skype Journal (here, here and here) but also by many of the VoIP bloggers such as Andy Abramson and Alec Saunders.I agree with Mathew Ingram in that the Google-eBay deal may turn out to be more important for Google than the Google Office announcement.

You can follow up (with a link to the podcast) here. It's been twelve years since I did media interviews as President of the then newly formed Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft. So if it sounds a bit rusty, it's just my nervousness associated with my first experience with doing a podcast and yet my sensitivity to try to keep a freely flowing conversation.moving along.

Thanks again to Jon for the invitation to participate.Give a listen (iTunes Player recommended) and hope it can provide some additional insight into where Skype is going.

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Skype gets hooked on Google. What's all this mean?

As Jaanus Kase of Skype puts it, "What does all this mean in detail? We'll see next year, as testing of all these new joint initiatives is said to begin in early 2007. For now, one thing is sure -- great companies working together is always exciting news."

Yes, the Google-Skype story feels very upbeat. It is a tremendous opportunity to monetize their huge customer base. This is bigger than SkypeOut and very scalable.

So do we have to wait till 2007? Will there be no sex? I doubt it. The new Skype-enabled Google Tool Bar is available in the 2.6 Preview Release Jaanus blogged about here.

Big Disclaimer

The formal press release ended on what seemed to me to be an unusual disclaimer,

"At this time, eBay does not expect this agreement will have material impact on its financial statements in 2006 or 2007."

Really? No sex? Let's see later today how Wall Street votes. eBay shares should, in my opinion (just about worthless), get a big boost.

To find out I talked with Don Albert, the North America General Manager for Skype. Don told me:

'Click-to-call' is something we have not done before. It is brand new. We are really excited by it. It is a new revenue stream for eBay it is just too early to predict financial impacts.

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In a press release issued this morning, Google and eBay announced an agreement which comprises "two primary components involving text-based advertising and "click-to-call" advertising functionality";.In the course of the press release there are several implications for Skype; however, let me draw attention to where Skype already has incorporated Google searches, namely, as an option in the search icon of the Skype Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Skype Toolbar for Firefox:

Other options in this Skype Toolbar's search element include Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, eBay and Shopping.com.

Lisa Leff at AP provides a good overview; combined with the press release we can see the following implications for Skype:

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This is the first in a series going deeper into the "softer" business case for using Skype in the workplace. The series' launching point is the Squidoo Lens 8 More Reasons For You To Pick Skype At Work.

People ask "Why did Skype take off?" One reason: fabulous user experience. The time from click-to-download to your first conversation is short. And Skype outperforms expectations for ease of use and sound quality. First timers smile, laugh - you should see their faces in a class.

I contrast this with the first time I used the 1998 version of SAP. You attended a two-day class to learn how to fill out a simple invoice. Then promptly adjourned to a local bar to drown the frustration and helplessness.

Back to feelings. Great experiences stimulate adoption, indifferent and bad ones trigger abandonment. As true for industry as for consumer goods. Any IT manager will tell you it's hard to redeploy a product once users have puked on it. So happy, confident user experience curtails this risk.

Comparing Skype to other solutions, how well do they deliver on first impressions? Which indicators of customer delight fit this context?

Let's look at some steps in a new user's experience.

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Jaanus Kase. Skype's Chief Blogging Officer who visited Phil in Oakland, is also the Chief Skype Forum Officer and has recently completed leading the transition of Skype's Forums to a new platform that provides both visible and backend improvements resulting in a much more resilient and secure forum ecosystem. Key issues included login protocol, security and anti-spam measures. So what's changed? From Jaanus' Announcement: Welcome to the new Skype Forums post:

Here are the most important changes.

• separate forum logins discontinued - you now use Skype Name
• new forum platform - means more security, less spam, new features
• layout and skin changes - you can now use the Skype Emoticons and Skype My Pictures
• admin team reorganization - see below, "Who's who"
• structure changes

The most important "first use" change is the "Identity Re-claim" process for transitioning to using your Skype login information as the login to the new forums. But it's effectively the usual Skype login web page process; you do need to think about what you want to use as your Forum Display Name (which is independent of your Skype Name and becomes your identity on Skype Forum posts). The details are on the Announcement page linked above.

Jaanus, on his personal blog, has written a much more detailed description of the more than year-long process his Skype team went through in identifying problems with the previous php-BB-s platform, determining the objectives of the "forum remake", deciding on a new platform (Invision Power Board) and then executing on the transition in as seamless a manner as possible. In addition to making the change in login protocol, the most important considerations was to not lose access to three years of user feedback and passion. Makes for an especially good read if you're involved in managing a similar user forum.

Our congratulations to Jaanus and his team for such a successful transition. And may the user passion continue to be expressed!

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Watching blogpulse's chart of Skype's blogshare, I can't help noticing how closely the line of the term "VoIP" follows the incidence of Skype-related terms. It's almost as if VoIP is mostly getting mentioned as an explanation or echo of Skype. Has VoIP become redundant as a consumer marketing term? If you're a rival, are you better off saying your product is "like Skype" than "a VoIP tool"? If you're Skype, why would you even mention the term to consumers?

So if Skype is driving the public perception of VoIP, how much is Vonage affecting the "VoIP meme" with their massive US ad campaigns?

Skype is more than VoIP, of course, and the company has a real chance to define its brand on its own terms, and not just on this last-millenium bit of jargon. Careful framing may put all the traditional VoIP people at a disadvantage. For example, Skype adds value with secure phone calls; does your VoIP do that? Since "free" isn't enough to justify North American mass adoption, Skype marcom will explore all the other offers it can make. Its choice of offers may not only redefine VoIP, but set expectations (privacy, presence, collaboration, picture sharing, voice quality, ease of use, video, it just works) competitors may find challenging to match.

Last night I ordered a whole bunch of components to upgrade our main PC and satisfy my wife's Warcraft addiction. Today I got a text message as follows:

There is a problem authorising the payment for your order E123456 . Please ring us on 0870 0123 4567 to resolve this. Thank you for your custom.

Of course, you call the number and have to re-dictate your order code to the agent.

There was also an email with the same message. Now, with a URL, you can add in parameters at the end. Just tag on "?param=value". But the telephone system doesn't understand URLs, and there's no standard way of encoding phone numbers in SMS messages and emails to be able to extend the system just in case you do have a click-to-call capability. (Yes, I know about SIP URIs. The potential is there; a standardised deployed system is not.) There's no way of me pressing the "call" button on my mobile and the order code being passed straight back to their system.

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"Skype video is fantastic. I had three video IP surveillance cameras installed in my retail store to monitor the cash counter and they just did not have a useful frame rate. I need Skype. It will work great but I need it to operate without popping up when I call the remote Skype Client. What can I do?"

I understood this man's problem instantly. I met a woman who ran a cappuccino shop a few years back who was losing a ton of money by staff pocketing the money instead of ringing it in the cash register. Her profit was back the moment she installed a video cam surveillance unit.

However, you cannot eliminate the pop up of the Skype Application when the call comes in. So how did this man solve his problem and get Skype working in stealth mode?

Easy. Set the Skype Application to run under another account in XP while the computer runs in the normal log-in account. Do not use the "Right Click and select, Run As... to set up the second Skype Client. Insead set up the surveillance Skype Client using "Log-in" command at the Start Menu.

Skype now has a happy retailer somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean.

BusinessWeek broke the story of Skype's founders launching a TV net distribution biz as a venture separate from Skype. Not known if it will be in the eBay family, but Zennstrom and Friis will remain 100% and 80% at Skype, respectively. It is code named "The Venice Project," not likely related to a 1999 time travel movie about the arts of that name (Lauren Bacall, Dennis Hopper, and a large cast split between modern Venice, California, and an earlier Venice, Italy.) Om Malik says "we told you so." So do we. Skype Journal wrote in January that Skype's ringtone relationships would lead to music, television, and movie distribution. Then with Warner Music, now with EMI Music Publishing.

This isn't good for eBay. The way they are organizing The Venice Project, as a separate venture, may conflict with eBay's strategy to use Skype as a platform to make markets for intangibles. We live in a service economy but eBay makes its living making markets for atoms. One SkypeBayPal vision extends their community and market-making excellence to paid live and time-shifted conversation. Not just video files and streams, but one-to-one education, consulting, information services, and entertainment. And eBay's budding alliance with Hollywood loving Yahoo! could easily fuel an eBay entertainment distribution channel with alliances and content. While the Venice Project could build on Skype and eBay, it doesn't look like there will be direct business or technical connections to the mother ship. eBay's loss.

Meg won the fight for Skype's soul: Skype will be an eBay enabler (as opposed to revolutionizing conversation, work, and entertainment as we know it). Skype's new management is building Skype's community and eBay's sales in 2006 and 2007. Given that direction, could The Venice Project be an outlet for the founders' broader vision? Or just a simple thrust at a gobsmackingly huge market? Either way, it's almost always faster to build your skunkworks outside the behemoth.

Rafat Ali says N & J should talk with Masayoshi Son about his plans in this space. Ars Technica's Anders Bylund points to the founders' bizdev power as key to partnering with TV studios and producers. Mathew Ingram thinks TV execs must be ready to dive in since they are living with industry disruption. Not to mention the worst ratings ever.

Two years's from now? Imagine TVP launches in January, gets 100 million people in 2007 who want to watch TV on their PCs and mobiles. Brings a little long-tail to the game, so you can always find something to watch and an audience for nearly anything. Restores social elements to watching television on your PC (think Skypecasts for sporting events). If effective, it could easily add one more nail into advertising-based TV's ratings, stealing attention from cable and satellite delivered television. Who loses? Other television distribution channels, like cable and satellite. What kind of content and viewer lock-in can TVP secure against the Comcasts who will surely copy TVP's business models? 

I came across this recipe in the bottom of a drawer...

Bittersweet mashed telco business model compote -- Serves 6 billion

Ingredients:

1. Legacy telco 800 number business.
2. Parasitical Internet payment subsidiary.
3. Large e-commerce hub.
4. Merchant base looking to increase revenues.
5. Rapidly growing private voice network.

Directions:

• Create new intermediary 800 number, 1-800-VIA-EBAY.
• Create namespace for extensions, e.g. "PLUMBER" is 7586347 on your phone keypad.
• Get users to register their phone numbers; send SMS or callback to verify and enter activation code.
• Get users to register bank and credit card payment details with your payment subsidiary.
• Ask users to fill in profile details such as demographics, address, etc.
• Encourage users to set up a PIN.
• Incentivise advertisers to use your 800 number system.
• Simply forward calls from unknown/anonymous callers straight to the merchant at no charge.
• Mediate calls from known numbers. Offer a "merchant edition" call receiving suite. Make exchange of profile data and transactions instant, anonymous and secure. Request user PIN where appropriate.
• Charge merchants for higher close-out rate, better personalisation of product targeting, transaction fees etc.
• Use PC telephony subsidiary to enable higher-quality multi-modal alternative access mechanism.

Scoop out telco revenue, place in serving dishes, share among yourselves.

Martin cooks at TelepocalypticKitchen.

One of the challenges of entering the VoIP consumer space is to simply sign up users; so how do you match up the fact that Skype has over 100 million registered users (even if only max 7 million, and climbing, are on Skype at any given time)?

A lot of posts yesterday about Gizmo Project's newly announced "All Calls Free" program whereby registered GizmoProject users can make free calls from GizmoProject to  either VoIP or PSTN phones, provided both parties are registered GizmoProject users. At the right is the resulting right click menu for individual contacts.

The genius in this program is the attempt to drive market awareness virally by getting all your (PC- and headset-equipped) friends and family to sign up for GizmoProject and experiment with it. You then have the option of calling them at no charge; they can receive the call on either the GizmoProject softphone or their legacy PSTN phones. However as Mark Evans states in his post, "Telco Hell":

"The idea of free calls will no doubt appeal to the bleeding and leading edge who have no concerns about using software and computers rather than traditional telephones. For the mainstream, the Gizmo Project is probably difficult to grasp."

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Skype ran a few radio commercials in the San Francisco Bay Area in the last few weeks. So far I've confirmed KFOG, easy listening, and KQED, a public radio station. I've only heard the fifteen second KQED spot, a simple description of skyping.

Meanwhile, Skype's U.S. channel partners need marketing help now for their fall advertising. In interviews they're telling us, and presumably Skype, they need previews of marketing messages, design themes, audio/video/flash elements, research, planned media placement, and anything else to help them sell Skype-related goods in their back-to-school and Christmas campaigns. At least one mentioned wanting to piggy-back their own ads to run at the same stations and time slots as Skype's ads. It's not clear if Skype will budget co-operative or co-branded advertising funds.

Skype makes money by licensing their "Skype Certified" logo to selected hardware sellers.

From today's Form 10-K:

"Communications net revenues totaled $44 million in Q2-06, representing a 26% increase from the $35 million reported in Q1-06."

The trend: large but linear. Skype's net transaction revenues six months' ago were $24.8 million (q4-2005). Linear growth means Skype's viral spread is offset by switching to a rival or people just dropping out.

The number of Skype accounts is growing slower than revenue.

Registered Users -- Communications had a cumulative total of 113 million registered users at the end of Q2-06, representing a 20% increase from the 95 million in Q1-06. Communications registered users represent the number of unique user accounts created on Skype.

So Skype is picking up about 6 million accounts monthly, worldwide. Now any other new softphone would kill and get VC money for numbers like this. But Skype is shooting for 200 million accounts by year end. At this rate they'll only make 149 million.

How about U.S. growth? 86% of Skype's revenue remained international, down a hair from 87%. This just means that Skype's growth in the United States, the great untapped market, is matched elsewhere. Let's assume 86% of the new accounts are international, just like the revenue. This means Skype's been picking up 840,000 new US users per month. Big in absolute terms but small as a percent of all US people online or even eBay customers. The U.S. market will need a promotional shove to grow faster and catch up.

Do you think the North American challenge may have factored in promoting Henry Gomez, former eBay Chief Marketing Officer, to be Skype's CMO? Or in offering the promotion of free SkypeOut in Canada and the States until year end?

Technorati Tags: skype, ebayinc, ebay inc, financials, statistics

Over the past week there were a couple of news items about video communications services:

• Out of Japan, Novac has released a product, Skype TV, that lets you stream your TV across Skype video. More commentary from Gizmodo.
• Last Monday came news about the forthcoming SightSpeedTV, a new feature to be included in SightSpeed's next release at the end of the month.

But moving beyond the place-shifting domain, last week I had a demonstration of Tele3DWorld from Mellanium, a 3D design and modeling studio. Using 3D texture rendering CAD software with output via a video capture card, they have Skype or SightSpeed recognize it as a webcam for video.

One of the people behind this has already used it on a sales call for the remote dynamic 3D presentation of a new anode metal refining furnace where different types of refractory brick are used within the furnace depending on the high temperature profiles.. Using this tool, Joe was able to walk his customer through the interior of the proposed furnace, zeroing in on critical heat sensitive areas and showing how they have addressed issues related to the different types of brick. In another demonstration, he walked me through a tour of a proposed palliative care unit; a third demonstration is a walk around tour of a WWII Spitfire bomber, initially drawn up in AutoCAD.

In the course of my experience with desktop sharing or web conferencing services, one frustration has been the inability of web conferencing products to do 3D CAD viewing in real time within the desktop sharing tool sets due to the intense real time graphics demands. With video configurations such as demonstrated by Mellanium perhaps we can see this methodology become the standard for this business requirement.

Bottom line: Personal video services, such as Skype's video and SightSpeed will eventually deliver more than basic video calling. They will require either special hardware (Novac) or TV-tuner-equipped PC's, such as Windows Media PC's (Mellanium and SightSpeed) as the video source. Obviously the creative juices are flowing in developing webcam emulations that can flow video through Skype and SightSpeed.

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by: Julian Bond.

Julian is CTO of Ecademy, an online network "connecting business people." He Skype-enabled the Ecademy website to facilitate communications amongst members. The following is a post he made on the Ecademy Skype Directory Club forum in a discussion of the "code cracking" news.

Here's some ways to think about this. The first point is to understand what interop means. There are 3 ways of linking IM/Audio/Video networks.

1. At the network level. Transparently route chat, voice and video by linking the networks. Skype can't do that because there is no central network. MSN, YM! and AIM have a big centrally controlled part of the system even though a lot of the communication is P2P so they can link, at the cost of running that big central system.
2. At the server level. This is what some Jabber servers do. Because all communications go partly through a server they can be switched. It's the same as 1) except that anyone can run a Jabber server.
3. At the client. GAIM, Trillian and others let you have one client that speaks multiple protocols. You need an official account with any system you want to talk to but it blurs the differences between them.

So if there's a library that can be built into client code that duplicates the Skype protocols, 3) can be built. And 2) can be built where it's appropriate (eg Asterisk PBX).

Then look at two conversations that are happening on the Skype forums already: (i) Building audio/video stream access into the Skype API and (ii) release of a Naked Skype which is a library that provides the API without having to have the Client.

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It's been a whole lot of midnight oil, but I'm ready to announce something new and good: The Telco 2.0 initiative.

I'm working with my colleagues at STL Partners, who presently publish IMS Insider newsletter and IMS Insider blog (a.k.a IMS Skeptics' Weekly). We are creating a new consulting business, primarily aimed at network operators and suppliers hitting the telecom menopause and needing some business model hormone therapy. Together, we've got a depth of insight, experience and passion for the area I don't think anyone else can match. My personal goal/mantra: Deliver the sector-specific advice that McKinsey can't give you.

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Providing an outline and overview of the full Skype Certification program in action, including both the technology and business aspects, was the goal of Tiit Paananen's presentation at the eBay/Skype Developer Conference last month. The full slide presentation is here but I will add some comments that came out of the session.

From the Skype perspective, the certification process can become a "chicken-and-egg" problem in that both parties (Skype and the partner) must have a common visualization of what the end user product is and how it can bring value-add to the Skype ecosystem. As a result Skype has established a multi-phase process that facilitates preparation and communication while minimizing the number of steps to achieve Skype certification. Establishing this process involved:

• gathering requirements for the program
• establishing Skype's criteria for acceptance
• determining the pre-certification activity required to prepare for testing
• facilitating iterative listing of products as they change once certified.

The business objectives of Skype certification are:

• help sales of partners' products
• ensure a positive user experience
• establish quality control criteria and processes
• avoid technical issues once a product comes to market

To date Skype has the most experience with hardware certification (33 categories and counting) while they are still learning the processes and criteria required for software certification where they are still defining categories. A complete set of certification documentation (by category) is available on the website. As general guidance for software they look for:

• Solutions that make Skype better (Pamela)
• Solutions that Skype makes better (Salesforce.com)

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As a follow up to my post earlier this week and Phil's post on presence, Alec Saunders continues the discussion on presence and relevance issues with two posts:

First is a post triggered by an email response from Kyle Marsh, Microsoft's UC evangelist, to Alec's initial commentary on Microsoft's Unified Communications "Strategy" announcement last Monday. It is most interesting to read Kyle's email itself (included in the post):

"....For example, when someone sees an email they may want to respond with an IM or voice or video conversation instead...." You can see this concept in action now: Skype for Outlook Toolbar already allows one to trigger a Chat session with the subject line from the email subject; at the same time the ability to call the "Sender" from a single click, whether via Skype or SkypeOut is also available via the Skype for Outlook Toolbar. Or, as Phil says in the post referenced above: "Knock before calling. ... It's polite, and also a presence check.".

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Last week Microsoft cranked up the hype machine and had lots of people wondering if their announcement today would be something approaching earth shaking.  In the end it turned out to be about the consolidation of several communications related servers, such as Exchange and Live Communications Server, onto on Office Communications Server, available in Q2 2007. It was announced today so that IT and communications managers can start to plan architectures, hardware requirements and budgets for its implementation shortly after availability. Fundamentally it is a server product with clients that could potentially replace PBX's. But at what cost in revamping resources, redefining business processes and defocusing an enterprise's primary business strategy.

Two good posts I have come across:

Alec Saunders has an indepth perspective as both a former Microsoft product manager and a potential competitor to iotum's Relevance Engine. But, as Alec says:

When the announcement came, it was a damp squib. Microsoft will rename Exchange as Communications Server, and add telephony features to Communicator, and other products. It's an integration announcement, as opposed to a dramatic new direction -- a reprise of the 1993 announcement that created Microsoft Office out of Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. Interestingly, this tactic may backfire for them this time around. Today there's much more focus on open standards. The idea that you must buy all of your infrastructure from a single vendor just isn't palatable for many companies today. Certainly, that is the view expressed by TMC's Tom Keating in his coverage of today's announcements.

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Hasan writes:

Skype Journal claims US-based Skype users can call anywhere in the world free for 30 minutes. Also, keeping with the American obsession with their military, servicemen are being equipped with skype starter paks. Personally, I find this obsession with war sickening, but I am certain that they find my taste in sport equally sickening.

It's a smart move on a few points.

• It's timed just before an American holiday, the U.S. Independence Day, (4 July) when patriotic feelings are stirred up. Hear the marching band as Skype comes to the rescue.
• It's not just for servicemen, but for their families too. Can't you see the families reunited? Heartwarming calls? Kids waving hello to their mothers via Skype video?
• It's a market worth seeding. The military is a vibrant subculture, highly motivated to sustain family connections at distance and concerned about cost. The chance for Skype adoption is high, the cost of a trial is cheap ($100k?). A delightful side effect Skype must hope for: consumer products often find their way into field and office work, especially during wartime.
• One of the interesting things about the design of this promotion is its focus on using human bridges between two social networks, home and field. The home front is highly connected in small, dense networks of family, friends, veterans, and spouse support groups; localized. So best practices spread naturally within a local community. The field mixes people from multiple home-locations. They share news and new skills from home, spreading knowledge that finds its way back to other home-front locations.
• The U.S. Federal government directly employs about two million civilians, excluding the postal system. The number of people who work indirectly is estimated at 20 million. So this promotion is just a foot in the door.
• This promotion supports Skype's distribution channel by bringing 40,000 new customers into Radio Shack.

Sharing knowledge by word of mouth is a survival trait among military dependents. If Skype finds any uptake, even a little, it could well go viral.

Marketing to military families is not only a U.S. thing; if it works there, the same human drives could make it work in military subcultures around the globe.

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On reviewing my notes from last week's eBay DevCon and eBay Live, some interesting numbers came out in the various sessions:

• eBay: last year sold a "Gross Merchandise Value" of $44B, representing 14% of all ecommerce on the Net.
• PayPal's highest growth is in "off-Ebay" commerce. Last quarter (Q1-06) "Off-eBay" transactions grew by 59% while overall PayPal growth grew by 43% to $8.8 billion of transactions. On PayPal $1.5 billion of stored value is turned over every three weeks.
• Skype, in Q1 of 2006, provided infrastructure for 6.9 billion minutes of long distance calling; representing 7% of all long distance call minutes worldwide.

Developers:

• eBay - 30,000 whose work contributes to 25% of all eBay transactions
• PayPal - 2,500 supporting 350,000 web integrators
• Skype - 3,500 delivering 350 applications and over 400 hardware devices

As mentioned previously, eBay developers and Skype developers have two totally differentiated motivations: eBay developers serve as micro-IT departments to eBay resellers producing customized Seller websites while Skype developers produce Skype-embedded applications for resale to the general public.

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Perhaps the biggest news coming out of Meg Whitman's keynote this evening was that eBay will walk before they run with Skype integration. Basically, after stating that they want to use Skype to facilitate trade, especially in higher value items, they will tomorrow announce details of a program to test Skype in selected categories. eBay Motors and "Lost iin Space Collectibles" are two categories she specifically mentioned.. Sellers will be able to participate on an "opt-in" basis.

In the follow up speech by Bill Cobb, President of eBay.com, I get the feeling there is a corporate culture of "test, try, get feedback and evolve incrementally" rather than launching "earth shaking" services. He mentioned a couple of eBay trials where they had to back off as a result of feedback from trial programs.

More to come as we hear it; this post is coming via the free WiFi at Las Vegas' McCarran Airport. Air Canada is calling...

Update: More details and some commentary can be seen at Tech Crunch:

Whether sellers will welcome voice or IM contact from prospective customers remains to be seen. A more sophisticated offering enabling users to, for example, select only IM or IM and voice contact, or a permission request process letting sellers see a user's eBay reputation before accepting a call would have been a good thing to see.

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I just spent twenty minutes interviewing Lenn Pryor, Director of Skype's Developer Platform Business Unit. Lenn joined Skype just over a year ago; that year has provided plenty of opportunity to not only to assess the potential but also to make the changes required to have a successful Developer Platform business.

Skype Journal: Lenn, what is your vision for the Developer Programs going forward?

Lenn: Let's start by going back a year or so. The Skype API's were launched just over 12 months ago; we spent the first year laying the foundation. We introduced several basic support services including the website developer zone, forums, a developer weblog, and support documentation all at the same time as building a developer community. It was a learning experience for both our team and our developer partners; we learned a lot about what is required to support hardware, software and services built around Skype. We identified two key needs:

• on the product side: better and more API's; we have made several announcements at this meeting
• and on the business side: raise awareness for the new applications offered by our developer partners. The Plugin Framework announced at the DevCon (available in Q4-06) will help to address this issue by:
  • building applications that have a tighter fit within the Skype User Interface
  • facilitate both awareness and buying logistics associated with monetizing the applications.

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The Session "Servers and Plug-Ins: The Future of the API", led by Mat Taylor, Skype's API Product Manager, provided the Skype API roadmap for the API's over the next six to nine months. (Click the link above for the slideshow.)

Mat started out by reviewing the current status and highlighting what he felt were the top enhancement requests, based on feedback from the Skype developer community. He then went on to release the schedule for release of various new features:

• June/July 06: New Extras Gallery, Skype 4 Java, Skypecasts API, SMS API, Skype 4 Web
• Q3, 2006: Voice Access
• Q4: 2006: Call Transfer API (Skype2Skype only); Personalisation API and Plugin Framework.
• Early 2007: Call Transfer API (Skype2 PSTN)

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At a session on business opportunities for the Skype API's this afternoon. Charles Carleton, CEO of Jyve.com, gave a presentation on the recently launched Jyve Pro service. In the ensuing Q&A he commented on how his business relationship with Skyp. Key elements of Jyve Pro:

• Jyve Pro allows "experts" to charge for services delivered via Skype, such as music instruction or provision of personalized technical support.
• Jyve Pro is linked into payment systems such that revenue can be obtained via, say, PayPal regardless of whether it is a metered or fixed rate service.
• Jyve Pro manages sessions, tracks usage; it can be embedded into a website or weblog.
• Jyve Pro also includes a Directory listing available services by categories.
• Also available are evaluation/feedback forms and reporting features to provide analytics on usage.

Jyve has been known for developing presence and chat tools whose functionality have since been incorporated into Skype.  But they developed these tools as a precursor to developing the Jyve Pro service only because they were not available in Skype at the time; they did not see them as building a sustainable business. Charles made two key points in response to a Q&A question that came up:

1. Jyve Pro's ultimate value is provided through their aggregation of service providers (under their current beta program they already have 600); this is where they provide a unique, difficult to replicate service.
2. While they currently depend on Skype as the delivery vehicle, there is no reason they cannot migrate the service to MSN, Yahoo and/or Google should either the Skype relationship sour or one or more of these players become as relevant a player as Skype in the Voice 2.0 space.

Important points to keep in mind if you are looking to partner with Skype:

1. It's the customer partners and uniqueness of the service that builds value
2. Look for services that be can be readily migrated to other delivery vehicles.

This is no different from the experience 15 to 20 years ago where a variety of DOS utility products came and went because the utility publisher focussed on the technology (which often was often eventually incorporated into a Microsoft offering) rather than building a sustainable business servicing its customer base.

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