 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.
Your product may have it made but people are fickle. Earning their love is the daily work. See you at Facebook’s Amazing Press Conference. art: XKCD.
Host trivia games in Skype text chats with Renat’s Skype Trivia Bot, a Windows plug-in adapted from the classic IRC bot. Thousands of questions in English and по России.
Fame. Because a rumor Justin Bieber tweeted his Skype name caused a swarm of new Skype downloads, new user accounts, and millions of futile IM and call attempts.
Technology. Because Skype ran out of IPv4 addresses.
Credit. Because American Express ran a credit check when they hired former Skype CEO Josh Silverman to head their US consumer services businesses.
Deals. Because Canadian mobile operator TELUS tried too hard to order a SkypeIn phone number. Not available in Canada.
IPOs. Because Avaya startled Skype’s supernodes when it filed to go public.
Business. Because Microsoft tried changing Skype’s servers from Linux to Windows.
Envy. Because phone companies hired hackers to sabotage the network.
@Skype follows @Microsoft. Who knew?
Skype only follows 14 twitter accounts. In addition to Microsoft and Skype’s sister accounts (skypearabic, SkypeClassroom , skypedeveloper, skypedeutsch, skypesecurity, skypejobs, SkypeAccess, skypeenterprise) and spokesperson PeteratSkype Parkes, Skype follows @internetweekeu (Internet Week Europe coming this November), US mobile operator and partner VerizonWireless, public policy advocate theOpenInternet Coalition.
@Microsoft is more of a player. The M follows 333 bloggers, reporters and news blogs, Microsoft house twitter accounts, cool apps, hardware partners, Justin Bieber, big customers, and a few trade shows where Microsoft exhibits. Microsoft even follows Google. And, yes, Microsoft follows Skype. (Hmmm. Not @SkypeJournal? Something to work on.)
The real story is @Microsoft has 96,005 followers while @Skype has 158,062. That’s why Microsoft paid a premium for Skype!
JPMorgan Sachs and Chase Goldman are advising Skype Journal.
Quora asks: “Given our current technology and with the proper training, would it be possible for someone to become Batman?” Many great answers, but here’s mine.
 The qualifications are time, effort, focus, technology and youth. Oh, and several folks mentioned money. So let’s start with money.
I’m going to assume our Batman candidate is an American Billionaire. So if you’re not one of the 410 people on the Forbes 2011 list of the wealthiest people in the USA, you’re not going to be Batman.
Provisioning Batman, even before globalization with Batman Incorporated, is at least a billion dollar project. When you’re buying or building cars, computers, weapons, and facilities at the state of the art instead of the state of the market (after the manufacturing learning curve), you pay a stiff premium. Buy secretly and you’ll pay even more. To stay a billionaire after spending a billion on your Batfleet etc., you must start with $2 billion. That cuts the Forbes list in half, to 219 people worth $2 billion in 2011.
How about youth? Let’s set an arbitrary cut off of 60 years old to allow for the long hours and physical endurance required of the training, the job, the public life, physical therapy, and counseling at Arkham Asylum. That leaves Warren Buffet out but Larry Ellison and Bill Gates in. If you’re not on this list, you cannot become Batman. (And perhaps one of these folks is already in training or is already leading a double life, but that’s another question. I’ll leave it as an exercise for our Quora Community to further winnow the list based on talent, aptitude, and inclination.)
Under 30
#52 Mark Zuckerberg, 26. $13.5 B, Facebook.
#420 Dustin Moskovitz, 26. $2.7 B, Facebook.
#362 Scott Duncan, 28. $3.1 B, pipelines.
Under 40
#24 Larry Page, 37. $19.8 B, Google.
#24 Sergey Brin, 37. $19.8 B, Google.
#336 John Arnold, 37. $3.3 B, hedge funds.
#268 Daniel Ziff, 39. $4 B, hedge funds.
Under 50
#362 Milane Frantz, 41. $3.1 B, pipelines.
#512 Ken Griffin, 42. $2.3 B, hedge funds.
#145 Pierre Omidyar, 43. $6.7 B, Ebay.
#268 Robert Ziff, 44. $4 B, hedge funds.
#44 Michael Dell, 46. $14.6 B, Dell.
#268 Dirk Ziff, 46. $4 B, hedge funds.
#488 Tom Gores, 46. $2.4 B, private equity.
#564 Marc Benioff, 46. $2.1 B, Salesforce.com.
#30 Jeff Bezos, 47. $18.1 B, Amazon.
#362 Dannine Avara, 47. $3.1 B, pipelines.
#564 William Wrigley, 47. $2.1 B, chewing gum.
#304 Edward Lampert, 48. $3.6 B, Investments.
#540 Philip Falcone, 48. $2.2 B, hedge funds.
#69 Abigail Johnson, 49. $11.3 B, Fidelity.
#362 Randa Williams, 49. $3.1 B, pipelines.
#540 Nicolas Berggruen, 49. $2.2 B, Investments.
Under 60
#336 Daniel Och, 50. $3.3 B, hedge funds.
#595 Winnie Johnson-Marquart, 51. $2 B, SC Johnson & Sons.
#459 Mark Cuban, 52. $2.5 B, Broadcast.com.
#595 H. Fisk Johnson, 52. $2 B, SC Johnson & Sons.
#80 Len Blavatnik, 53. $10.1 B, Access Industries.
#208 David Tepper, 53. $5 B, hedge funds.
#46 Steve Ballmer, 54. $14.5 B, Microsoft.
#310 Mitchell Rales, 54. $3.5 B, Danaher Corp.
#459 Warren Stephens, 54. $2.5 B, Stephens Inc..
#595 Lee Bass, 54. $2 B, oil, investments.
#595 Helen Johnson-Leipold, 54. $2 B, SC Johnson & Sons.
#2 Bill Gates, 55. $56 B, Microsoft.
#39 John Paulson, 55. $16 B, hedge funds.
#114 Steve Cohen, 55. $8 B, hedge funds.
#136 Eric Schmidt, 55. $7 B, Google.
#595 S. Curtis Johnson, 55. $2 B, SC Johnson & Sons.
#595 Kelcy Warren, 55. $2 B, pipelines.
#10 Christy Walton & family, 56. $26.5 B, Walmart.
#110 Steve Jobs, 56. $8.3 B, Apple, Pixar.
#336 Paul Tudor Jones, 56. $3.3 B, hedge funds.
#440 Ronda Stryker, 56. $2.6 B, Stryker Corp..
#540 Jin Sook & Do Won Chang, 56. $2.2 B, Forever 21.
#595 Henry Samueli, 56. $2 B, Broadcom.
#254 Robert Rowling, 57. $4.2 B, Investments.
#420 Oprah Winfrey, 57. $2.7 B, television.
#459 Stanley Druckenmiller, 57. $2.5 B, hedge funds.
#488 Marianne Liebmann, 57. $2.4 B, Cargill, Inc..
#512 Rodney Lewis, 57. $2.3 B, Natural gas.
#540 Randal Kirk, 57. $2.2 B, pharmaceuticals.
#57 Paul Allen, 58. $13 B, Microsoft, investments.
#136 Charles Ergen, 58. $7 B, EchoStar.
#149 Andrew Beal, 58. $6.6 B, bank, real estate.
#347 Ron Burkle, 58. $3.2 B, supermarkets, investments.
#393 Riley Bechtel, 58. $2.9 B, engineering, construction.
#540 Bharat Desai & family, 58. $2.2 B, Syntel.
#196 Patrick Soon-Shiong, 59. $5.2 B, generic drugs.
#310 Leon Black, 59. $3.5 B, private equity.
#336 Trevor Rees-Jones, 59. $3.3 B, oil & gas.
#347 Steven Rales, 59. $3.2 B, Danaher Corp.
#409 Nancy Walton Laurie, 59. $2.8 B, Wal-Mart.
#440 David Sun, 59. $2.6 B, computer memory.
#540 John Doerr, 59. $2.2 B, venture capital.
#540 David Shaw, 59. $2.2 B, hedge funds.
This post brought to you by BatCamp for Billionaires.
Are Bing search results predictive? I’ll let you know if the 2012 apocalypse doesn’t come first. Inspired by XKCD’s future timeline.
From his Flickr account:
Yes, I’ve decided to create a Skype account for The Expendable! I’ve done this so if anybody here would like any help, tips, or even just a friendly ‘ol chat, you can reach me easily. This account is a way to communicate with the Lego community without having to do it all over Flickr.
However, I do have a private account for my real friends, because as some of you may have noticed, I keep my Lego life separate from my real life on the outside world.
To add me, simply add;
theexpendable11@yahoo.co.uk
If you love Legos, Jack, The Expendable, reproduces modern and historic army tank designs using Legos. Some have instructions. Now if we can only build Skype into a Lego tank… Skype for Mindstorms?
The Smurfs are making their case to Skypers worldwide. “We want our blue back,” said Grouchy Smurf. “Today is a day of action. We’ve gone too long without smurfalicious Online Numbers in our village. Skype should smurf it right now. ”
I came to the story when I looked at Skype and saw it had been smurfed. It was complete and utterly disruptive. I was no longer online, I was “Smurfable.” They even confused me by changing Skype’s usual Ikea-styled house into a cute mushroom home.
I checked the About Skype box and sure enough…
This looks like trouble.
Full Story »
Can you confirm that Wikipedia’s paywall is down or hacked? If you have any clues as to how it was done or who was behind it, please email tips@SkypeJournal.com or contact me. We’re running down the story. Thanks.
The time frames for responding to the real-time web are so short we need new tools to beat the clock. We need The Anticipatory Web. Predictive analytics are a start but we must use available technologies to act preemptively, faster than instantly. Here’s a short talk I gave at the 2012 World Analytics Congress last April First.
Key points:
- The time to respond to tweets is smaller than the time it takes to see tweets.
- Let analytics blog today what you’re going to say tomorrow.
- “Tomorrow’s tweet, today”
- “Predictive Commenting”
- “Reply before the post is finished”
- “Retweet before the tweet”
- “Friend on the Forecast”
- “Predictive breakups” using analytics for timing
- “Predictive gameplay” for unfair advantages
- “Predictive voicemail” leading to preemptive message deletion.
Now is just not soon enough.
I’ll be working on this at the next Startup Weekend in San Francisco if you’d like to talk about the AW.
 Today is Hug an Estonian Day on Facebook via Plancast. Jaanus Tõnisson wrote:
- 24th of February is the Estonian Independence Day.
- This event was created because we feel that Estonians have a not so good image around the world. That’s mainly created by newspapers, radios and TV, which hunt the bad news for coverage, as those ones bring more audience.
On the other side, we really know that Estonians are good and loveable people. Anybody who meets a Estonian finds this soon enough.
By having this hugging event (you can read it as "talk to an Estonian" or "have a drink with an Estonian", same thing) we aim to have people all over the world really meet Estonian, flesh and blood ones.
- Please keep it in English, as this is an international language and we have a lot of people joining us from all over the word.
If you’d like to send your Eesti sweetie a Skype emoticon heart with the Estonian flag, like above, just copy and paste the text from the box below.
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May You And Your Skype Contacts Have a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year!
For 2011:
Platform
- Televisions from Philips, Sanyo Electric, TCL, Toshiba, and Vizio come with Skype apps preinstalled.
- Only two of Samsung, Panasonic and LG will continue to offer SkypeKit-based TVs.
 In Store Solutions, Skype consumer electronics partner and retail middleman, launches new FreeTalk HD webcams with microphones for the desk and improved HD webcams for televisions. - A Skype app ships on 3D televisions, without 3D.
- SkypeKit goes from announced-but-closed Beta into public Beta.
- Long time Skype partner IPEVO finishes selling its inventory of Skype-certified phones, webcams, and speakerphones and abandons the Skype market, burned from years of neglect.
- SkypeKit comes out of beta.
- Pie is the new cupcake.
- Skype hires a guy named Soups.
- Skype hosts four devcons in Europe, America and Asia. Seven thousand developers attend.
- Skype cloud services go into announced-but-closed Beta.
- Facebook buys TokBox.
- You can get Rails, Scala and Clojure wrappers for SkypeKit.
- Skype’s directory of people and businesses gets a web service API for server-to-server people search.
- Skype launches an app store. Again.
- Skype for Linux is almost open sourced. Nearly. So close.
- Another Skype robot.
- Skype over Near Field Communications.
- Yahoo! Messenger APIs find fast uptake, accounting for 25% of all of Y!M message traffic by year end as mobile clients find it easy to and reliable to build in.
- Skype extends its presence web services to include social updates and mood messages.
-
- Skype for HTML5.
- Skype buys Voxeo.
- Skype shows up in a TV product not made by a television manufacturer. Roku, Boxee, Clicker, Apple TV, Slingbox, Google TV come to mind.
- Google offers a Voice cloud platform.
- Augmented Reality UI for Skype.
- The functional programming re-architecture of Asterisk produces working prototypes by Q4 2011 Astricon.
- A third-party attempts to rebuild Skypecasts, only to suffer the Tragedy of the Chatroulette.
Consumer
- Group Video comes out of Beta. Starts charging. Free to consumers with global subscriptions. Cheap to businesses.
 Black Beauty, The Green Hornet’s car, comes with a SkypeKit option. - A language file for Klingon localizes Skype.
- Windows Live Messenger adds free 5-way group video calling.
- Dolby Labs releases a push-to-talk teamspeak service for MMORPG players.
- Skype’s Apple-like lifestyle branding outshines Skype’s enterprise brand.
- Indianapolis Colts win the Superbowl.
- Skype starts showing you a list of other places where you are logged in. Starts as a security measure. Actually helps people find lost phones.
- Skype for Kindle.
- Skype supports OAuth and OpenID.
- Skype continues complicated identity models, fractured between “corporate” and “consumer” IDs.
- You’ll be able to pay for Skype calls with Facebook Credits.
- Skype for Vampires is used by Lucy in the Vampire Summer Camp movie, shooting in New York.
- Wal-Mart’s sells Skype credits, accessories again, this time outside the US.
- Two large metropolitan hospitals set up Skype for patient visits.
- Skype’s revenue from Marchex browser toolbar advertising will pay for someone’s bonus.
- Skype will be preinstalled on 50% of all tablets.
- Someone is arrested for using Skype in a country where Skype is forbidden.
- US Skype growth slows as high unemployment and weak labor markets make US metered broadband unaffordable.
- Greyson Chance is the new Justin Bieber.
- Skype store sells T-Shirts featuring cute Skype characters created for the Asian markets.
- Skype rocks Rio’s Carnaval Samba Parade.
- Rising Skype T-Shirt and rub-on tattoo sales beat falling non-HD webcam sales.
- After representatives can’t agree on how to sit around a table, a new session of Middle East peace negotiations are called The Skype Talks.
Enterprise
- Skype launches lightweight conferencing service cheaper than Citrix GoToMeeting.
- Skype reports its Connect trunking contributed $50 million in revenue in 2010.
- Skype commercializes a ruggedized client for places where low power and dial-up connectivity is the norm.
- Skype announces tiered SkypeOut subscription plans for businesses. This makes Skype budgets manageable for companies, revenue predictable for Skype.
- Skype becomes a darling of the hospitality industry as hotels install Skype-ready TVs and rake in affiliate revenue.
- The King’s Speech gets best picture Oscar.
- Skype’s Global 2000 direct sales team rides a wave of IT social software buy-in, gets 25 million new workplace users by July 2011.
- Skype buys DropBox.
- Skype video worries enterprise network managers as usage soars.
- Washington Capitals win the Stanley Cup.
- Salesforce builds SkypeKit into Chatter.
- Skype expands its partnership with Nuance to include transcription of conference calls.
- The first Skype apps will ship on Avaya phone stations.
- Skype publishes anonymized data sets about its network and customers for use by academic researchers.
- One million people work full time using Skype.
- 200 thousand customer service operators will use Skype at work.
- Real-time social media profiling (rich caller ID) will be the hot thing in call center software.
- Skype Connect will include the IETF ViPR protocols developed by Skype’s Jonathan Rosenberg and Cisco’s Cullen Jennings. The protocols teach the PBX which SkypeOut destinations can bypass PSTN on future calls. Customers will save tens of millions in the first year.
- Skype televisions become hot in conference rooms as new ones support Skype HD video for just a little more than a dumb TV.
- Google Voice in Europe.
- Google Voice in Google Apps issues more than 5 million US workplace phone numbers.
Mobile
- Apple launches FaceTime for Windows.
- Apple ships FaceTime for Mac and Windows with iTunes.
- Apple ships FaceTime for Android and Blackberry.
- The number of active FaceTime users approaches half of Skype’s by YE2011.
- Skype for iPad launches with iPad 2. So good it sells iPads.
- Skype for iPad touch interface flows over into Skype 6 desktop client.
- Skype mobile video calling on
iOS, Android, Blackberry.
- Skype mobile apps show users live data consumption rates vs. monthly/daily bandwidth quotas.
- Skype Me! Returns with the launch of Skype-by-Barcode and Skype-by-QRcode for mobile phones.
- Skype for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.
- The first car dashboard with Skype for Drivers.
- Mobile operators worldwide adopt a two-tier pricing structure, only allowing Skype on a higher quota, higher cost data plan. #deathofnetneutrality
- Verizon Wireless and Skype renew their US relationship, but no longer exclusive.
- AT&T and Skype announce Skype preloads for iOS, Blackberry and Android mobiles and netbooks. Deal not extended to set top boxes.
- 28 billion mobile app downloads. (Not just Skype apps, obviously).
- Mobile operators stall on instant messaging for another year, afraid to cannibalize their SMS cash cow.
- Skype adds speech-to-text conversion for mobile instant messaging.
- Skype preinstalled on thirty Chinese 3G Android smartphones from ZTE, Huawei, Zoom Technologies, G’Five International, TCL/Alcatel, and Beijing Tianyu for domestic use.
Corporate
- TOM-Skype partners with two of the top four Chinese telcos.
- Skype IPOs in 2011Q2.
- Skype IPO market cap beats US$3 billion.
- Skype raises $100 million from its customers for emergency relief efforts.
 Disaster to be named later.
- Facebook tries to buy Skype for stock options.
- Cisco buys Skype for cash.
- Naspers buys Skype for cash and stock.
- Skype cited in #WikiLeaks’ Cablegate.
- Skype has more than 1300 employees by year end 2011.
- Two patent suits against Skype fail on their merits. One settles out of court before Skype’s next liquidity event.
- Seven electricity utilities will offer telephony products and fail.
- Mobile operators subsidize their own video calling with free data if you use their app instead of Skype’s.
- Skype reaches 30 million concurrent users, up from a 2010 peak of 25. They credit growth in the workplace and mobile devices with video-chat-ready cameras.
- Skype accounts for 16% of all international minutes spoken.
- The telecom ministry of a country in the Pacific will approve Skype for economic development zones.
- The US Army preinstalls Skype apps when they distribute smartphones to all soldiers.
- Belize still blocks Skype. VPN companies promise Skype access.
- A third-party publishes a live map of Skype supernodes.
- North Korea still blocks Skype.
- Despite the block, 10,000 people show North Korea as their country in their Skype profile.
- Antarctica: highest percent of Skype accounts per actual resident.
- Green resistance uses Skype in the aftermath of the death of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
- Skype publishes a Data Portability Policy.
- A US court rules Skype must offer e911 emergency dialing.
- Skype reports surviving a cyberwar-style attack.
- No new EU and USA net neutrality laws or regulatory powers as laissez-faire takes hold.
Our prior art: Phil Wolff’s 67 Reckless Predictions for 2010 and how I did. Phil Wolff’s 26 incriminating 2009 Skype Predictions, Phil Wolff’s 37 Sketchy 2008 Skype Predictions, Predictions? Wish List? What’s In Store for 2008 (Jim Courtney).
Check out what William Ogburn predicted in 1931 about 2011. So spot on.
Chat with me on Skype. Call me at +1-510-343-5664 (Google Voice), follow on twitter @SkypeJournal(just the posts) and @evanwolf (everything). Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats, where we’re talking about this right now.
Phil Wolff’s 67 Reckless Predictions for 2010
By Phil Wolff, on December 30th, 2009
30 NO, 24 YES, and a bunch of DON’T KNOWs.
 In 2010…
- A hot stranger will IM something inappropriate to you. (NO. Skype’s new filtering technology has been surprisingly good in 2010.)
- Skype‘s SilverLakeification will be complete, with a very short leash on strategy and operations at first. (YES)
- Skype will serve 125 billion minutes of calls. (DON’T KNOW)
- Second Life will serve 20 billion minutes of calls. (DON’T KNOW)
- Oprah’s television show will end as scheduled in 2011; lots of Skype calls in 2010 leading to the finale as former guests make cameo appearances, holding out for a spot on Oprah’s last (highest-rated-ever) episode. (NO. Oprah switches to Cisco.)
- "The Tyra Banks Show" will end as scheduled in 2010. Nobody will Skype in. (YES)
- UK police will allege terrorists use Skype (like everyone else). Parliament will demand the PM bring Skype under control. (NO. Surprisingly quiet on that front after previous lobbying.)
- Skype 5.x will offer multiparty video. (YES)
- Skype 5.x will offer team features. (NO)
- Someone will attend a family funeral via Skype video. And forget they are on camera. (DON’T KNOW)
- Skype will release a "naked Skype" public beta. This Skype engine, no user interface, will be free/cheap. Hardware developers will like it; web developers won’t. (NO/YES. SkypeKit released as a publicly-announced invitation-only limited private Beta program. Who’d have thought?)
- Skypecasts will still be offline. (YES)
- Facebook will add voice to chat. (NO. Despite partnering with Skype on directory services for “finding Skype friends in Facebook.)
- Skype for Business will account for ten percent of Skype sales. (DON’T KNOW)
- Nortel changes its name to Avaya. Or avice aversa. (NO. Assets sold to Avaya, Ericsson, Genband, Ciena, Kapsch; none keep the Nortel brand.)
- The world economy will continue to suck. An American commercial real estate crisis will reinvigorate the Great Recession. Good news for Skype as more people work from home. (YES)
- 24‘s eighth season will feature Cisco’s new midrange video conferencing. (NO. Still just the highest end Telepresence products.)
- Skype won’t offer a "Login with Skype" service. (YES)
- Vampires still won’t Skype. (YES)
- Tencent will buy ICQ for its non-China userbase. Skype won’t. (NO)
- Google Talk will add multiparty video with On2 inside, and become a standard part of the Google office suite. (NO)
- Skypers post thousands of videos of Skype calls on YouTube, thanks to recording software. Jeremy Hague’s Vodburner outpaces Pamela as the bestselling Skype add in. (DON’T KNOW)
- The US student loan crisis ($700 billion outstanding) strains consumer lending. (YES)
- Skype starts a post-SIP standards discussion about communications protocols for the 21st century. (NO. No public discussion or progress on the ViPR protocols.)
- Avaya will make Skype for SIP the default setting for new switches they sell. (NO. At least not yet.)
- Skype manages to get a television commercial on the air. (NO. Waiting for new members of the UK Advertising Standards Authority?)
- China’s troubled economy will boost Skype usage when families can’t afford to travel home for the Lunar New Year. (DON’T KNOW)
- A team will talk for 200 hours in an uninterrupted Skype-to-Skype call. (NO)
- Wi-Fi phones will ship with Skype SILK inside. (YES. See Grandstream.)
- Six former Skype employees will become CxOs. (YES)
- Someone dies, unable to Skype for emergency help. (DON’T KNOW)
- You’ll be able to make iSkype voice calls on Verizon 3G before AT&T 3G. (NO)
- 100 handsets will run on Google’s Android. (YES)
- Skype will release their homemade COTTON video codec, so they don’t have to use the ones from Google‘s On2. Higher quality. Easy, free license. Independence. (NO)
- Skype.com still won’t let you log in with OpenID. (YES)
- Windows Live Messenger gets a huge boost in new user signups from Bing, Office2010, Office Live, and Windows 7. Microsoft will rock in 2010. (YES)
- LG ships a television with Skype inside. (NO)
- Mobiletelco 3 ships its third generation Skypephone. (YES)
- An angry entertainer tweets to a million followers her PC crashed and lost all her Skype history. So she’s switching to… (NO)
- Skype opens a mobile research lab in India. (NO)
- Gizmo5 features migrate to Google’s plumbing and Google Voice. (YES)
- A Harvard Business Review case will feature a Skype-related issue. (NO)
- A Fortune 500 company (not eBay) will provide Skype for Windows for their employees. (NO)
- Volunteers phonebank using Skype on behalf of a national EU political candidate’s campaign’s. (NO)
- A lobbyist slips a Skype-hostile measure into a US law on behalf of incumbent telcos before Skype can muster opposition. (NO. Weak net neutrality rules didn’t require laws).
- The Skype store will sell a netbook with Skype preinstalled (NO).
- The BigTelco industry pressures Nokia, so it never preinstalls Skype on its Series 60 line for the US market. (YES)
- Skype relaunches its
software platform developer program mid-year. (YES)
- Skype’s unreasonable Broadcast Terms of Service keeps it off new dramatic television programs and out of movies all year. (YES)
- A court will find Skype guilty in a class action suit related to collecting small sums of money from customers but not offering service or prompt refunds. (NO)
- Skype will offer to buy Tokbox for its browser-based video. (DON’T KNOW)
- Skype revenue per minute called will continue rising from $0.06 as Skype trunking starts to contribute. (DON’T KNOW)
- Skype will top $900 million in revenue. (DON’T KNOW)
- Skype will sell small businesses pricing plans making it easy to budget and buy. (NO)
- An IETF working group publishes avatar portability protocols. (NO)
- 23 million people will log in to Skype at the same time. (YES. 25.)
- 180 million new Skype accounts, about 500k daily. (DON’T KNOW)
- Someone Skypes from a Virgin Galactic space flight. (NO)
- Skype loses juicy US government contracts over the TOM-Skype security compromises.You don’t know when someone you’re talking with is using a TOM-Skype client with monitoring software from Chinese security agencies. An audit will show Skype on 500K federal employee computers anyway. (NO)
- Skype relaunches Skype for Android. Android Skypers have more dialtone per user than the iPhone or Skype Lite. (YES)
- Zombies become the new Vampires. (YES)
- Tom Green Show‘s corps of Skyping fans will continue to Skype into the show while he is on the road with his new Standup Comedy Tour. (YES)
- Skype-like features become generic, included in every communications and collaboration product shown at Demo, TechCrunch50, Telephony Startup Camp and similar product launchpads. (YES)
- BT/Ribbit adds video support to its platform for programmers. (NO)
- Voicemail to email transcription becomes a standard feature in most markets for mobile and home phone service. (NO. I can’t honestly describe what I get in the email as transcription.)
- United Nations rescue and recovery teams standardize on Skype. (NO. But almost!)
- Skype sponsors a Festivus site for the public "airing of grievances" and videos of your "Feats of Strength." (NO. Dagnabit.)
Hudson Barton predicts a 2010 peak of 27,695,335 Skype users online, Total "real users" will be 67,596,505. (NO. A touch high on the peak: 25,706,903 actual. Same for Real Users: 61,507,824.)
Was 2010 what you expected? Chat with me on Skype. Call me at +1-510-343-5664 (Google Voice), follow on twitter @SkypeJournal(just the posts) and @evanwolf (everything). Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats, where we’re talking about this right now.
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7 years and 12 days since Skype Journal launched as a stand-alone blog.
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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. 
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