How many people use Skype? How much? @Skype tweeted yesterday:
- “Steve Ballmer announces new stat: Over 200 million avg. monthly connected #Skype users #CES”
- “And a 2nd new #Skype stat: More than 300 billion total calling mins annually, with approximately 50% being video calling mins #CES”
The 200 million average monthly connected users for December 2011 is consistent with an end-of-year bump as people substitute Skype for travel. Skype has been running weekly highs of 30+ million and lows of 15+ million concurrently connected for the last six months, more consistently high than in previous seasons.
Skype’s 300+ billion minutes of live talk is a little less than half the time people spend on Facebook, if we go by the 53.5 billion monthly minutes reported by Nielsen for May 2011.
Meanwhile, Skype continues stealing cross-border-calling minutes and hard currency from international telecoms, per Telegeography. PSTN traffic was 438 billion minutes in 2011 compared to their estimate of Skype’s 145 billion minutes; about 1 in 4 cross-border minutes are on Skype. This is up from about 1 in 5 last year.
Roughly half of all Skype minutes cross a national border if we trust these figures.
Skype is capturing share at a much faster pace than the international calling market as a whole:
 Phil Wolff designs and positions realtime collaboration products for effective people. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
You know the line about men and women thinking about sex n times per day? My digital life is more on my mind than sex.
I left my phone in the car. My folks and I arrived in Fairhaven, a neighborhood of Bellingham, Washington, to shop for children’s toys and browse the Village Books store. iPhone in coat, coat locked in car, I went iPhoneless for two hours.
A half-block from the car I had my first phantom limb experiences. I saw an abandoned London red phone booth and reached for my phone to take picture. I settled for a camera but I wouldn’t be able to twitpic that photo or share it with my telephony buddies.
Over the next 120 minutes I wanted to:
- price compare books via Red Laser,
- endorse an oil and vinegar tasting boutique on Yelp!,
- check on expansion packs for Cataan (found something complex to level the playing field),
- photograph some beautiful chutney at lunch,
- look up Washington State’s counselor licensing (saw an office building full of therapists),
- log how far off-diet my meal sent me,
- check in from Village Books,
- look up that indie-book-seller coalition they belong to,
- read about their anti-Kindle campaign,
- download the Fire & Ice four-pack to my Kindle app,
- snapshot the cover of the last Gaiman book for friends in a science fiction Skype chat,
- ask Quora a question about the DIY book industry,
- remind myself to pack warmer next time,
- read more about Washington State investigations into Whatcom County budget magic,
- bookmark a book on business modeling for a friend,
- check the hourly weather for that evening, and
- peek at my sister’s family Amazon holiday wishlists.
That’s at least 18 reflexive reaches for my iPhone. 9 an hour, every 6 or 7 minutes. According to one recent study, this is more often than we think about sex. And this was just a casual family holiday stroll through a suburban shopping district.
Many of us are getting used to augmenting thought; in our ongoing internal dialog, conversations with others, shopping and working. Life is better with apps and live data. Heck, we think more complete thoughts, plan our future better, and interact with others in more informed ways with our digital life. Each time we reach, we’re getting mind candy, positive reinforcement. Our operant conditioning is strong.
So disconnecting causes withdrawal symptoms. How long offline does it take you to stop reaching for your laptop, tablet or mobile? For the conditioning to break down? Could observing a digital sabbath give us more freedom and control over our reflexes, more power to alter and adjust our behavior? Or should we not bother? Should we accept this new twitch response as an improvement?
This mind enhancement comes with strings and risks.
Does this new conditioning tie us to one company more than others, like mobile operating system publishers?
How can our new behavior shift power among corporations, governments, and individuals?
When you reach for your brain-augmentation-device, are you missing things because of that reach, causing new problems? Can the impulse to reach cause distracted driving, even without the gadget at hand?
At what point does personal dependence become a public necessity, like water, air, safety, and roads?
Can this behavior be exploited like sex? Sexy advertising bypasses our executive cognition and taps something more primal. Are printed www links and QR codes a first stab at triggering our digital reflex?
So here’s the test: Without hyperlinks in this post, how many times did you think to click on something? More times than you thought of sex? Aha!
CORRECTION: Skype for Windows 5.7 Beta includes a Push-To-Talk feature. “We have introduced a Push to Talk feature in Skype. Many people who are playing multiplayer games have requested this from us. With this feature you can set a hotkey which will toggle microphone muting on Skype call. You can set the Push to Talk up on the hotkey’s selection under Tools > Options > Advanced > Hotkeys.” — 27 November 2011.
Push-to-Talk is a style of voice call control reminiscent of the way you use a WW II era walkie talkie; on a common channel, the channel is silent unless a participant presses and holds down a button, turning on a microphone. Releasing the button turns off the mic. This is attractive when you have many people in a channel and want to avoid distracting background noise and extraneous chatter. Police radio and taxi dispatch are examples from the real world.
Technically, you might also think of push-to-talk as a call where mute is the default. Try this: start a Skype conference call then have everyone mute themselves. Want to speak? Unmute. Then, when you’re done, mute yourself again.
So why is that Skype operation not what realtime gamers need?
Full Story »
UPDATE: WHOOPS! Financial Times says EU Commission will approve deal, no strings. I guess it still managed to slip through. “Competition reviews are still under way in Russia, Ukraine, Serbia and Taiwan.”
Less than 100 hours from Europe ruling on the Microsoft-Skype purchase, Skype’s Jean-Jacques Sahel shared a Plum report on the economic value of an “open Internet.” (pdf). It’s an argument for net neutrality, including mobile net neutrality. Sahel’s post is Skype asking regulators to protect Skype’s access to the Internet from companies with the power to harm that access. I believe in net neutrality too. Skype wants government protection from powerful carriers but is struggling to avoid similar obligations of access, openness, and giving back as it finds its own power.
I wrote Monday that Skype is too big to slip under regulatory radar. With Microsoft, Skype will no longer be a David to telecom Goliaths. They will be a Goliath. Powerful, vast, and fiercely competitive.
Decentralization of power was at the heart of the Internet’s design and architecture so the net would survive a nuclear attack. "Network neutrality" is a way of repeating that principle. It is unhealthy for the Internet when companies further down the IP stack exploit their power and play favorites among users from higher up the stack.
With great power comes great responsibility. The MicroSkype deal concentrates power. Skype hasn’t shown willingness to do any more than what is required by law.
- They are willing to disrupt landline and mobile operators, but unwilling to enable public services like e911, fund relay services for the hearing or vision impaired, or contribute to funds for improving Internet access.
- They are eager to distribute Skype by bundling software with Microsoft products, but are unwilling to do so in a way that offers a level playing field to rivals.
- They are open to API integration with friends of Microsoft like Facebook and, presumably, Microsoft’s divisions, but they burden their developer program and APIs with untenable terms of service, prohibiting use of their network by use, location, and device and requiring prior approval of any app using their network.
A measure of oversight, ensuring responsible use of power, is fully within the mandate of those approving the acquisition.
Some, like my friend Jim Courtney, worry the EU has been ineffective, citing their failure to protect Netscape from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in the late 1990s browser wars. Maybe.
Ben Lilienthal suggests switching costs are lower with Skype, so their power may not be as absolute. Sure, but Skype is not a personal data portability champion.
Many want Skype to play fair. Alon Cohen IM’d he’d want Skype to “Support 911, collect and pay taxes like everyone else, or stop offering PSTN phone numbers. (Gov can remove the taxes, which will be just as fine from my perspective). Open up to SIP, provide every Skype with a phone number or URI accessible to other companies..”
So what does Skype’s post, “The open Internet: platform for growth. The open Internet is an essential platform for growth and benefits for all, including telecom operators: it has to be safeguarded” really mean? Regulate Skype and it will cost jobs. Really?
Here’s what the Europe could do:
Have Skype be a fair platform provider, enable third-parties to plug their own software and hardware into the Skype network, preserve consumer choice, support citizen safety like other phone companies, let your users leave with their phone numbers and data, support local and regional consumer rights, tilt the balance toward personal power over state power in this transnational Internet, and collect taxes. Specifically, quoting from my earlier post:
- Microsoft must expose to the developer community all those plumbing features that make the Skype network so effective on the same basis that Skype and the Microsoft app developers receive access.
- Divide Skype departments between the communications infrastructure and the app layer. Make them operate as two separate businesses.
- Compel the Skype Network business to treat all customers at least as well as it treats Microsoft and Skype Apps Division customers.
- Mandate “platform network neutrality” where bits from third-party apps travel through Skype’s network as well as bits from Skype’s own apps.
- Skype must publish protocols so anyone can connect whatever software or service they like to Skype’s network so long as that end point doesn’t harm the network.
- Skype cannot tax, register or otherwise control end users or third-parties connecting to the network.
- Require compliance with emergency service access laws and rules, subject to user opt-out and local law.
- Promote comparable third-party communication products on Microsoft platforms as least as well as you promote Skype.
- Prohibit restrictions on bundling third-party Skype-compatible products with Microsoft products.
- Require compliance with emergency service access laws and rules, subject to user opt-out and local law.
- Skype must accept the transfer of a customer’s existing phone numbers to Skype’s service.
- Skype must enable customers to transfer of a Skype-connected phone number to a competing network.
- Skype should not be allowed to take away company phone numbers once in service.
- Skype must let third-parties extract all customer created and co-created data on behalf of users.
- Forbid Skype from banning “class action” suits by customers in its terms of service.
- Compel Skype to report statistics on government requests by type and country of origin, the way Google does.
- Compel Skype to promptly notify users when they are being surveilled or requests for information about their activities have been demanded by authorities. This should be subject to the laws of the country where the customer claims citizenship. So a US or Chinese government agency could not order Microsoft to spy on the conversations of a French and German national without the consent of the French and German governments.
- Require that Skype APIs and clients disclose to users the jurisdictions of their contacts. You can only make informed choices about whom to talk to or not, what to say or not, if you can assess the consequences.
- Compel Skype to collect fees and taxes from its customers as required of telephone operators. At a minimum, contribute to the fund that pays for relay services for the deaf and blind.
It’s time for Skype to step up.
Corporate citizenship comes with benefits. This is a rare moment to review, renew, revise and modernize the duties that come with that privilege. The United States missed its moment. Will Europe seize theirs?
 Phil Wolff consults with Hookflash, a software company building realtime communication products for effective people. Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype. Phil’s opinions may not represent the views of Hookflash or Skype.
photo: Occupy Wall Street, 26 September 2011, cc-by-sa by Paul Stein.
The European Commission will make a statement on the Microsoft-Skype deal on or before this Friday, 7 October 2011.
Skype is too big to slip under regulatory radar.
Skype was all promise in 2003. Now it is achievement. They are no longer the tiny underdog fighting the phone companies. They are a billion dollar a year business with a thousand employees serving nearly two hundred million people 255 billion of minutes of live conversation every year, rounding slightly. They’ve pulled so much hard currency from national phone companies that Russia’s Chamber of Commerce declared Skype an enemy of the state. They’ve changed consumer behavior and become the default way to talk across borders for anyone with Internet access.
When should regulators consider this a threat?
Now, when an ounce of prevention matters most.
Microsoft wants to multiply Skype’s reach and impact. Microsoft seeks to combine Skype with its other communications properties and bring realtime communication to its non-communication products. Skype, along with Nokia, completes Microsoft’s vision for the Windows Phone operating system. We’ll see Skype inside Microsoft games, Lync business phones, Bing click-and-call adverts, Dynamics call center solutions, Office, Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer.
As huge as Skype is, they could be ten times bigger in a few years with Microsoft’s help. $10B in revenue, 2 billion users, trillions of minutes of live conversation. That comes with market power.
US regulators cleared the deal. A decision by EU authorities is days away.
Who is affected?
At least one Italian VoIP company is reported opposing the deal, per EurActiv. Messagenet asked the authorities to require Microsoft not to bundle Skype with Windows and to compel interop with other Internet presence, IM, telephony, and video chat services.
Full Story »
A $39.99 box the size of a coffee mug, the FREETALK Connect.me lets Americans plug your dumb phone into your Ethernet network. Your phone rings when someone Skypes you or calls your SkypeIn phone number. You can call out to phone numbers using your Skype credits or your SkypeOut subscription. And you can call Skype users if you add them to a “speed dial” list. Just don’t try to dial 911 or another emergency phone number; Skype will refuse to pass the call through to avoid regulation.
Phone geeks call this an ATA device, short for analog telephone adapter or analogue terminal adapter, connecting an old style phone with a VoIP service. Previous third-party Skype ATAs all died horrible deaths, languishing in warehouses, returned to retailers, or stuck in my old-electronics-waiting-for-recycling box. What makes the Connect.me different?
A few things. First, this is a smarter ATA, not requiring your desktop computer running Skype except to set things up, assign a Skype name, pay credits, or change your speed dial list. Second, setup may be simple, but Skype didn’t send press test units in advance of today’s announcement, so I won’t be able to attest to that.
 Some downsides. Freetalk isn’t worried about sound quality; your home phone’s microphone and speakers won’t do justice to Skype wideband audio anyway (G.722, G.729 and Skype NWC codecs). No emergency dialing. It uses an additional power outlet, and is wide enough to require three outlets on a power strip. It occupies one of your router’s few Ethernet ports; no WiFi. It may ring on non-Skype calls. If you use multiple Connect.mes, you’ll have to install the Safari browser on your PC to configure them. You won’t be sending caller ID but you’ll be able to see incoming IDs.
Clearly Hong Kong’s Freetalk, on behalf of Skype, hopes this smarter ATA (SkypeKit inside?) will sell. Freetalk failed to bring its much more expensive Freetalk Connect•All multiline small business phone system to market at $2000. The Connect.me is more their style, cheaper than many Skype headsets.
Skype investors will appreciate Connect.me too, as it spreads Skype’s dialtone so more people are available to make and take Skype calls 24×7. Skype wants your phone to ring when you are away from your home computer or when your mobile phone is off.
User Tip: Dial ** before a number to force the call to Skype. Dial # first to force the call through your local phone company.
From the Skype store FAQ:
What Skype features are supported on the FREETALK® Connect•Me Phone Adapter?
- Free, unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls (up to 99 speed dials/Skype contacts)
- Calls to landlines and mobiles domestically as well as internationally.
Can I access my Skype address book?
Yes, once you have completed the set up on your computer, your phone adapter will be automatically synced up with your Skype account. So all your Skype contact details and numbers will be ready to use.
Can I make Skype-to-Skype calls to other devices, such as mobiles and Skype-ready TVs?
Yes, you can contact anyone on Skype regardless of the device they are using.
How do I add credit?
Buy your first credit amount online by clicking on ‘buy credit’ at Skype.com. If you select the ‘auto-recharge’ option, Skype will recharge your account automatically when it falls below $2 so you do not unexpectedly run out of credit.
Can I receive calls?
Yes, if someone calls you, your home phone will ring and you can answer as normal.
My landline and router are not close to each other, can I still use the home phone adapter?
Your landline socket and router do need to be near each other as they both connect to the home phone adapter. However, you can purchase a ‘Powerline Adapter kit’ which extends an ethernet network connection to any electrical outlet.
I only want to use my home phone adapter for Skype calls, must I connect my landline?
A landline is not required to use the home phone adapter for Skype. However Skype should not be considered as a replacement landline service.
CORRECTION: eBuyNow Ltd. is in Hong Kong, not Spain.
 Wow, It’s been eight years since Skype launched. 2003 to 2011. I’ve been writing about Skype on my own blogs or on Skype Journal from the start. SJ alum Jim Courtney salutes Skype today and Skype pats itself on the back.
Looking back…
The company has been bought and sold, and sold, and sold. And soon to be sold again.
The founders were in, kicked out, then held key technology for ransom to get back on the board for their big payout from Microsoft.
Skype averaged a new leader a year.
Skype disrupted international telephone companies, displacing billions of dollars of hard currency with free or very cheap services. Their success has them banned in some countries and declared “an enemy of the state” in others. Didn’t stop them from partnerships with mobile operators from Hong Kong to Italy.
Roughly half the Internet has tried Skype on a personal computer, a mobile phone, or in a device. Skype isn’t ubiquitous but its brand is. And Skype continues to grow.
Why? What does the future hold?
As for why Skype’s been successful…
Skype’s timing was great, several times. Just in time for broadband to make consumer VoIP practical for millions. A few years’ later, just in time for a lift by eBay’s brand (did you know Skype was an eBay company for half its life?), Skype was able to hire GIPS expats and ready itself for the webcam explosion. And when the world economy imploded in 2008, Skype was a large enough network that people turned to video calling as an alternative to travel (airlines hate Skype).
Skype partnered intensely. If you could bring a million new users to Skype, Skype cut a deal. Large national web portals have Skype sub-sites, laptop manufacturers preinstall Skype on Windows, mobile operators install Skype on Android phones, and you can find Skype on TVs and soon on game stations.
Skype focused on customer acquisition. During its eBay years, Skype pursued new users at the expense of product innovation.
Skype gets the viral business. It takes two to talk and Skype made sure you had every reason to drag your friends and family into the network. Skype keeps removing roadblocks to onramping and adding reasons to subscribe. This could be Skype’s first billion dollar year.
Skype delivered real value, consistently, affordably, to millions of people.
So, a few longer-term Skype predictions:
In 2011:
Microsoft will close the deal.
Skype will have more than 1000 employees.
Luxembourg will become Skype’s HQ in name only. Palo Alto is the new Luxembourg.
Microsoft Watch starts covering Skype closely.
In 2012:
Microsoft’s Skype division will absorb the Lync business unit.
Lync will be rebranded Skype.
Skype will launch its cloud products.
Skype will hit its Q1 peak of 35 million concurrent users, 220 million active users.
Victims sue Skype for not offering emergency dialing after a family dies.
Skype’s new cloud loses the US Presidential campaigns to Twilio, powering team and phonebanking apps.
A Skype toolbar and skinny-client comes with a new release of Internet Explorer.
Skype fuels LinkedIn chat.
Hackers reverse engineer Skype’s p2p network, make it public. Vulnerabilities and prior hacks exposed.
In 2013:
Skype for Mac catches up with Skype for Windows.
Skype for Windows Phone has cooler features than Skype for Mac.
Skype ships on the next Windows, in the next Office.
Skype becomes just one of thousands of products using in-browser WebRTC for calls, presence and IM.
SkypeKit becomes a standard component of Windows.
Skype kills the former Lync product family as PSTN hardware sales drop sharply. Lync becomes a Sharepoint feature, phone stations are all mobile, tablet or PCs.
Skype works with with Windows Live Messenger IM and voice.
In 2014:
Skype will generate one quarter of its revenue through Microsoft internal customers. Bing ads, Xbox subscriptions, Office, Windows.
Leaks reveal Skype cooperated with law enforcement in a totalitarian regime to shut down resistance. Leaks prove false.
Facebook drops Skype as a partner, as their internal pendulum swings to owning.
The Vatican IT department picks Skype as its telecom standard.
Skype for Layar brings talk to augmented reality RayBans.
In 2015:
Skype will deliver one billion minutes of live talk through developers using its cloud platform services.
Skype will generate one quarter of its revenue from platform services.
Skype and Bing launch YouTube competitor.
Skype is banned on student tablets in 903 school districts as a distraction.
Half of all televisions come with Skype inside or in an attached box.
Mass exodus as pre-Microsoft Skype employees fully vest and leave.
In 2016:
Phone banks using Skype for Web prove decisive in Get Out The Vote campaigns.
Facial recognition plug-ins reveal micro expressions and give live commentary.
Stallone Skype’s fighting instructions to his son in Rocky Junior.
In 2017
Platform products deliver half of Skype’s revenue.
Tony Bates named as Ballmer’s successor.
Photo credit: 8th Birthday Cake by Jim Capaldi for Emily’s 8th Birthday Party.
Thanks for all the Skype.
Every startup founder is getting this question from investors, and customers. This wasn’t true in 2009. The question speaks to two of Skype’s strengths as it approaches its 8th birthday: brand and network effects.
The first strength is brand awareness. Everyone knows Skype. Literally half of Internet users have tried Skype. So Skype is no longer the domain of specialists in telecom, instant messaging, or video conferencing. More people know about Skype than know about Cisco’s telepresence or that Vidyo powers Google+ Hangouts. More people understand you can make cheaper calls on Skype than know of the hundreds of other services that offer even lower rates.
The second strength is network effect. The chance that someone you know is in Skype are vastly better than with any other communication or collaboration service. A user’s social network switching costs are not trivial. You lose history, you lose touch with contacts. You are adopting a weaker dialtone with fewer people you care about available for calls right now.
To be considered, challengers must do what Skype does.
Skype is the new vanilla, the new baseline, the ante for this round. Once you can “skype,” then you must offer something different, something more, something better.
Bonush will try to be Skype voice chat in a browser after it launches. (open for early Beta right now.)
Ooma Mobile was Skype on an iPad, before Skype’s own iPad app.
Vonage’s Time to Call is the voice part of Skype while paying for international calls at Skype rates with pay as you go billing to your iTunes account. Convenient for some.
TalkMe.IM’s Talkatone is Skype with Google Voice.
IsCoord’s is-phone conference for iPad is Skype with SIP without video on an iPad available for white-label OEMs.
Toktumi’s Line2 is Skype with better SMS and telephony features, without video, instant messaging or presence.
FriendCaller is Skype on many devices and in browsers, with a Facebook voice app.
ChatTime is SkypeOut international calling for less money, showing what time it is where you’re calling.
Voxer is Skype without PSTN, adding voice IM and location check-ins.
Apple’s FaceTime is Skype just for Apple and without PSTN service.
Skype still wins. Explicit or not, every time we discuss a product in this space, we invoke Skype.
Rivals (and even the term “rivals” invokes Skype) have four choices:
- Do less. Cut features to increase focus, convenience and usability.
- Do more. Add features to serve unmet needs.
- Do different. Reconceive the problem, delivery, pricing, psychology.
- Niche. Serve an underserved market, add insight into a specific context.
Two things complicate matters.
1. Skype is a moving target.
They left an opening for iPad apps for two years, letting others define themselves as Skype+iPad before entering the space. We will see Skype@Microsoft co-brand all sorts of products, from Sharepoint services to gameplay add-ons. This adds danger to filling in a gap in Skype’s product family.
2. Skype is become platform.
Microskype will offer real-time communication components to developers on nearly every Microsoft platform. Mobile, web, desktop, server, you’ll be able to build Skype into whatever you imagine over the next few years. APIs make “do less,” “do more” and “niche” easier for everyone, right down the long tail.
For example, blogs like Skype Journal will offer group video chat for readers of this very page, the site paying a tiny monthly subscription for the feature, free to visitors. It will be part of every “would you like to talk with a customer service agent” widget. Peer-support graphs like WeightWatchers, Quantified Self, and Twelve-Step programs will guide with whom you talk and when.
Platformers like Skype, Voxeo, Tokbox, Jajah and Twilio will power them, commodifying voice and video chat as hundreds of thousands of apps and web sites add realtime talk to their user experience palette.
So what works now? Less, more, different and niche are all viable. You just must be extremely persuasive on why the “better” you offer is worth the customer’s switching costs. Investors will want you to spend toward achieving network effect critical mass.
What works in the long term? Dominating a defined niche (there’s room for only one Grindr) or changing customer expectations, as Skype did to Plain Old Telephone Service.
Someone will change the paradigm, displacing Skype as the iconic reference. Until then, product managers, buyers, investors and the press will ask: how are you different from Skype? Your answer is…
“If you are not paying for it,
you’re not the customer;
you’re the product
being sold.”
posted on Metafilter’s
“User-driven discontent” thread
by blue_beetle
at 1:41 PM on August 26, 2010
Facebook’s customers are its advertisers, making Facebook’s users the product sold to advertisers. This creates a tension between the needs of advertisers and the needs of users. Facebook’s success has been walking that line closely and carefully, minimizing the perception of intrusion while aggressively pimping their users to merchants.
Skype’s users paid for SkypeOut and SkypeIn from the start, accounting for 90% of revenue, so Skype’s bottom-line interests were aligned with its users.
Skype’s management slowly eroded that alignment.
Employers. Skype Manager and the Skype for Business desktop client for Windows give your company control over Skype credits, privacy (your manager can see all the SkypeOut calls you make), specific features (your manager can turn off IM or file transfers, for example) and many user preferences (see the Admin guide to Skype).
Advertisers. Skype produces ad revenue through business directory listings, toolbar and web site Click-and-Call ad services, some in-app display ads in the “home” tab, and toolbars. The newest version of Skype for Windows, the 5.3 Beta, now shifts focus away from where you left Skype, pulling you out of context, showing you the latest big advert. You cannot return to your conversations without dismissing the ad, an annoying usability hit.
Distribution Partners. Skype works closely with phone companies and ISPs to promote Skype to their customers. These deals come with strings.
- The Skype mobile app for Verizon came with an exclusivity, hurting US Skype users who weren’t on Verizon’s network.
- Those same versions came CALEA wiretap-ready, making all Skype calls less secure (you can’t know if other Skype users are using a surveillance friendly version).
- Skype’s TOM-Skype partnership in China similarly walked back Skype’s original spyware-free premise in exchange for opening up their largest market; TOM-Skype is free to package Skype software with spyware and malware as ordered/suggested by Chinese government agencies and common business practice.
- Skype lowered call quality for its first Verizon Android apps at Verizon’s insistence.
- Skype’s 3 Skypephone partnership in the UK restricted SkypeOut to international calls, even when domestic SkypeOut rates were cheaper than 3’s.
Developers. Half of eBay’s revenue comes from transactions driven through APIs. Many of Skype’s managers from that era learned that lesson. eBay listens closely to their developer channel, sometimes wrestling over fees, access to customer data, and terms. As Skype’s platform products (embedded, cloud, mobile) reach programmers, Skype will be tempted to meter access, charging for use of its APIs. We haven’t seen Skype choose between developer and user interests. Yet.
Microsoft. This is prospective: Ballmer and Bates committed to building Skype into a range of Microsoft products. Will the Xbox division be Skype’s customer? Or the Xbox players? Live Messenger’s advertisers or Messenger’s users? Bing’s advertisers or Bing’s users?
Skype may never again report its revenue by source, a strong alignment signal. So watch Skype’s behavior. Does Skype serve you over all other others? Or does Skype deserve the high customer scrutiny and alternatives Facebook inspires?
photos cc-by: evan moss, elizabeth stark.
 Are you tired of Twilight romance? Of True Blood intrigue (the new season starts this weekend)? Then pick up The Strain. Hogan and Del Toro’s vampire trilogy is a dark, fast, medical thriller; an epidemiological Robin Cook meets Nosferatu’s creepy dread.
We meet The Strain’s vampires at New York’s JFK airport, a superbly evolved viral infection, spreading wildly through populations despite the best efforts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who are better prepared for a zombie apocalypse. When you are turned, you mindlessly return to your family to spread the vampire contagion. As you mature from a mindless, bloodthirsty revenant, you develop wit, self-control, focus and social organization. Society can’t take you down by killing some master vampire; every bit of your vampiric biological matter flourishes independently, finding niche after niche. Humans, dogs, vermin. The spread of this organism is so fast, wide, and effective, this could be an extinction event for the human species.
This is such a Skype story.
Consulting clients often ask me how Skype grew so well. I say virality was built into the product’s DNA from the start. You need two people to talk. So once you get the Skype bug, you drag your first circle into Skype, likely your family. Then you infect coworkers and friends. Finally entire institutions are in Skype’s thrall.
I was infected in 2003, shortly after Skype launched. I told my friends. I blogged about it. I invited colleagues. I bought webcams and installed Skype for my transcontinental family. Skype had a symbiotic relationship with me. I spread Skype and was rewarded with better calls, lower costs, more convenience, and more independence from phone companies.
Most social software manifests as an outbreak, burnt out quickly. Skype managed to become an epidemic, then a pandemic. Epidemic simulations model an infection’s success on multiple factors. Speed of transmission, the time until a new host becomes infectious, mortality or resistance rates, susceptibility distribution, isolation vs. connection of sub-populations, and reinfection rates.
The same analyses apply to Skype. Time until first call, loyalty rates, sharing rates, usage rates, peak social graph, time to first purchase, social graph diversity (a few strong vs. many weak ties), rates of use on more than one device, percent of time with active Skype dialtone.
Skype’s virality let it spread like a plague. Skype’s p2p tech meant it wouldn’t run out of food (cash) while it spread. Skype is still spreading after having touched nearly half of all Internet users.
The Strain is a compelling page turner. Can’t wait to read the second installment coming out in paper soon.
See also:
I’m an active Google office user. Gmail, calendar and docs are where I live and collaborate; as much as in Skype. Gcal keeps innovating ways to be useful before a Skype call. Reminders on my iPhone. Meeting invitations from Gcal and then from within Gmail edits. And now open office hours. I like the office hours concept where you state your availability and let others pick a time which suits them. I’m a huge fan of the Ohours.org service which pioneered an open marketplace for finding relevant people available for quick 15 minute Skype talks with qualified strangers. I’ve had productive chats via Ohours. Google’s “appointment slots” assumes you’ll take care of the introductions; each calendar has a slot sign-up page. This should be great for working with teams and outside partners. It skips the whole scheduling dance.
More important for Skype product management, calendar scheduling and alerting come before a call. This is a behavioral trigger. Exactly how long before Google makes it easy to jump from an event notification right into a Google conference call? Easier than into a Skype call?
So on the hypothetical Microskype integration agenda: calendar integration. This should include Outlook (hire and buy out the Skylook team, already; glad to introduce you), Outlook Express, Exchange Server, Outlook for Macintosh, whatever calendaring comes to the Live web suite, and take a look at CRM and workflow calendaring in Dynamics.
Meanwhile, I have some times Friday afternoon. Book me.
Few mobile operators let you accept collect calls; neither does Skype or Google Voice. I interviewed the genial Joey Zukran of Faircall about reverse charge calling. Would you partner with Faircall? Would you want Skype to let you accept or make collect calls? Let’s see if we reach the same conclusions.
1. The Interview
Skype Journal: Hi, Joey. What do you do at Faircall?
Joey Zukran: Faircall is the world’s largest operator of collect calling services.
Where is Faircall based?
Faircall has it’s head office in San Diego, California.
What user problem does Faircall solve?
Skype customers who cannot complete a call to a landline or mobile phone because they don’t have sufficient funds would have the option to use our Collect Call service to complete that call. Today, as I understand it, there is no solution. Top up or hang up!
How does Faircall solve it?
By allowing skype zero balance customers to make a collect call to land or mobile number.
How do companies like Faircall help companies like Skype?
We partner with companies like Skype to promote the service and share the revenue of successfully completed calls.
Does this type of payment service work everywhere Skype works? All the spoken languages? All the local currencies and payment challenges?
Yes, Faircall can be customized to all languages!
Microsoft will buy Skype soon. I heard Faircall just completed its own acquisition. Tell us about it.
We are the proprietors of the famous 1800-COLLECT brand. Under this brand we are able to complete and bill calls to all North American landline and mobile numbers. 1800-COLLECT, now part of the Faircall family, makes us the largest operator of collect calling services in the world. We are excited by this brand acquisition, given the many hundreds of millions spent promoting it in the past and all the associated good will that accompanies the brand still today.
You use live operators to offer collect calls. That feels so 1930s. How do you recruit and train qualified operators?
We of course cater to many different generations of 1800-COLLECT users, and I’m sure a few of those from the 1930′s :) . The user experience allows for access to a live operator as a courtesy to users that are unable to reach their called party through our normal automated calling process. Remember, it takes 2 to tango to complete a collect (the calling party and the call acceptance party), so a live attendant is there to provide instructions for how to make a call to another number and for further explanations. Our live attendant team is well trained and we use recruiting and training procedures similar to any large telecom call center operation.
How do collect services manage fraud, identity theft and other security challenges?
While there are security challenges in any business, fortunately the operation of a collect call service does not require the user to provide any personal information. That being said Faircall is both a CPNI (Customer proprietary network information) and PCI (payment card industry) compliant business.
Would they complete their call using Skype? Or would they use your own PSTN services?
Through our 1800-COLLECT brand, customers know the number by heart and use it to access our platform. Other marketing channel partners such as mobile network operators automatically rout their zero balance prepaid customers to our network as well. Upon our platform answering, we request the calling party’s destination number. We reach out to that destination number and gain bill acceptance and then conference the two parties together. Over 80% of the time this is an automated IVR call handling procedure.
I thought collect calling died long ago.
I can understand you having that impression, however the opposite is true; it’s still a service in high demand amongst prepaid telecom subscribers (i.e. Prepaid mobile network operators, prepaid calling card users and the like). In fact our service offering through those channels are enjoying month on month growth. Remember that a collect call for a zero balance prepaid subscriber of any kind, is ultimately the only way to complete a call to a landline or mobile phone.
How does it work? What would the workflow look like? A caller launches Skype, sees they are out of credit and then…
We foresee two ways in which zero-balance Skype users would utilize our 1800-COLLECT service. The first option would be a 1800-COLLECT icon next to the current “buy more” link that users currently see when out of credit. The second would be when a zero-balance Skype user attempts to make a call, they would then be shown an insufficient fund message and be given the option to either top up, or place a collect call via 1800-COLLECT.
So this wouldn’t be part of the Skype software? Users wouldn’t complete the call through the Skype network at Skype rates?
The call is initiated through the Skype software via an icon link we envision being part of the Skype software. Since it is the receiving party paying for the collect call, then it is in fact a free call for the zero-balance Skype user. As such it would never impact a Skype user’s ability to top up his account!
We foresee a zero-balance Skype user (attempting to call a land or mobile number) initiating the call through Skype and terminating through our 1800-COLLECT platform and our various termination methods we use today including PSTN. The call initiation from Skype to 1800-COLLECT would be accomplished through VOIP or SIP connection. For the initiating zero-balance Skype user this would always be a free call.
Is Faircall still part of BBG Communications?
 Faircall is part of, but a separate entity to BBG.
If companies like Skype want to talk, what’s the best way to reach you?
I can be reached directly at (514) 703-7377 and of course Skype me at joeyzukran.
2. A little research.
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The first result on a Google search for “faircall” is Complaintsboard.com.
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A single complaint in March 2009 from an angry customer. “On March 7, 2009, I placed a payphone call to my home from the Albuquerque airport, lasting only a few seconds (basically a "I’m here, come get me" message). The Faircall recording told me that my card account would be charged $1.00 for the call. When the charges came into my bank on March 26, besides the $1.05 charges, they tacked on an additional $11.27 for another call, which was not made by me.
I have seen many other such complaints online against this company. This is nothing less than outright theft. Why is this company still in business and why have they not been prosecuted?”
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Third on Google is Faircall.com. It’s "Rates" page:
$9.99* per call for max 10 minutes talk time
US Collect and AT&T also offer
$12.99* per call for max 13 minutes talk time
$14.99* per call for max 15 minutes talk time
*Message and data rates may apply
All charges will appear on your wireless bill or be deducted from your prepaid balance. All charges must be approved by account holder.
Supported carriers for the program are: AT&T, Bluegrass, Cellcom, Cellular South, Centennial, Cincinnatti Bell, Cellular One, ECIT (Cellular One of IL), Eastern Kentuky Network, Immis, Nextel, nTelos, Rural Cellular, Sprint, Suncom, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Verizon Wireless, Virgin.
To Stop messages at any time text STOP to 51712 or send an email to support@faircall.com, or for customer service information call 1-800-606-0599
For help at any time text HELP to 51712
- BBGOvercharge.com is just below Faircall.com in the search results, spewing anger and stories of perceived rip-offs, misleading explanations, and surprisingly high costs.
3. Conclusions
Faircall’s prices don’t fit Skype customer expectations. Skype’s global rate is about $0.02 per minute. Faircall charges $1.00 per minute if you talk the full ten minutes. The average PSTN phone call is only two minutes, so the effective rates is $5.00/minute. That’s 250 times the rate Skype users pay.
Faircall sets expectations poorly. See BBGOvercharge.com.
Prior customer experience. See BBGOvercharge.com.
Brand values. Faircall prices and markets to exploit moments of human despair.
I don’t see a fit. Do you?
So, back to the original question. Do you want a Call Collect button on Skype? 
Lee Matthews reported Microsoft Windows 8 will come with an app store. The story highlights struggles for power between operating system publishers, hardware makers, software developers, enterprise buyers, and the people who use software.
Who controls the virgin computer? Microsoft struggles with PC makers over what software ships with Windows. Companies like Dell, HP, and Sony add their own selection of non-Microsoft software to computers they sell. Bloatware often includes media players, video conferencing software, games, backup and antivirus utilities. This is important because many customers never download software after purchase; they use what comes with the computer. Companies have often paid handsomely for preinstallation and premium desktop placement.
Skype ships preinstalled on many Windows personal computers, thanks to distribution partnerships with companies like Dell. Qik shipped preinstalled on many Nokia smartphones.
Who controls consumer downloads? App stores liberate our shopping instincts. Apple’s app store changed user behavior. People feel safe enough to try and buy apps from a store whose brand they trust. Apple’s Mac App Store, and Microsoft’s Windows store, try to transplant that new consumer behavior to operating systems which no longer attract software developers.
 So far, app stores must come with an OS to find market traction. This bodes well, or at least OK, for the Windows store.
App store traction, however, makes bundling software with hardware less of a selling point. While preinstalled software is great for enterprises buying standard configurations, app stores hold the promise of personal choice.
Skype and Qik have been successful in Apple’s and Android’s mobile app stores. Will those successes translate to Windows and Mac desktop app stores? How will people shop differently in mobile and desktop stores? How will Skype optimize its products so it is a blockbuster capturing an unfair advantage in visibility, reputation and downloads? How does Skype avoid becoming a long-tail product, outshined by Angry Birds?
Who controls customer acquisition? Small developers rely on gaming the iPhone app store to be seen in an intensely crowded market. Social software — like Skype, Facebook, texting, email, and CityVille — replace heavy direct and retail marketing by building in reasons for customers to bring other people into their apps. Will app store operators consider social recruiting a leak in their control of their marketplace?
Who controls the business models? Apple has absolute control over its app stores. They limit what apps do, what they say, their pricing, and even subscription design. Microsoft must envy Apple’s ability to share in developer revenue. What controls, covenants and restrictions will Microsoft apply? Will the Windows store’s advantages make it worth Skype’s complying?
Who controls the customer relationship? iTunes set the standard for disintermediating record stores and music publishers from music buyers. I have a more active relationship with iTunes than I have with Blue Note. Have app stores done the same to software publishers?
GoogleTalk video calls are now an Android app, as are Skype’s Qik video calls. But these are just milestones on the way to a new platform for video calling.
 YouTube started with an asynchronous experience. Millions of files being uploaded, slowly. Prepared for different screens, slowly. Cached in content distribution networks, slowly. Watched on demand.
They’ve had many experiments with streaming live video, perhaps going back further than the October 2009 live-streamed U2 concert. 2011’s Royal Wedding was YouTube’s most-watched live stream. This means they had to upload one stream, instantly. Transcode for different screens, live. And cache and distribute live streams simultaneously across all regions.
Millions of live viewers, so, nicely done.
Is YouTube ready for the next challenge? To turn YouTube into a live video calling, conferencing, and casting service?
I’ve asked video and VoIP professionals about this for two years. Everyone says there are three challenges: addressing, connection and latency. Can YouTube users perform people search efficiently and accurately? Can you connect people promptly, grabbing attention so people answer a call? And can you stream the voice and video with less than a tenth of a second delay, so people don’t notice the lag? Industry people say these are hard, especially latency. No doubt. But I have confidence that Google’s commitment and resources can meet the challenge.
When the Google Voice team nails these problems, they are free to innovate user experience and market applications. To build live conversation into Google properties. To offer live conversation as a platform for AdWords advertisers. To define video as the default Android calling mode. To make your Google identity more important than your phone number.
Where does that leave Skype? Will they launch a cloud Skyping platform before Google? Will it be as compelling for today’s users and developers as the first Skype desktop clients were in the Summer of 2003? I know they aspire to a new degree of awesome.
Yet it probably won’t come down to quality or design. Network effects attract users, so the people you want to talk to or work with are within the network. Network effects trump product quality and user experience. Multiply network effects by the ability to reach people in the network. So can your network offer dialtone all day, everywhere, in every context?
Android gives Google an edge in network dialtone, always on in your pocket. Skype will have to be strategically awesomer to beat that.
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7 years and 2 days since Skype Journal launched as a stand-alone blog.
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Phil Wolff designs and positions realtime collaboration products for effective people. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
Chart showing timeline of effect of North American Level 3/TimeWarnerCable Internet outage on 7 November 2011. 
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