Google is building WebRTC into Chrome. WebRTC code and standards will let web developers and designers build realtime IM, voice and video into web apps and browser plug-ins. This milestone means we could see WebRTC apps in Chrome in the next few months. Nimbuzz and others are working on it. This removes one obstacle to Skype for Browsers, without downloading a fat client. How soon will Microsoft’s Internet Explorer follow Chrome? Or will it adopt another technology, making choices harder for developers and users?
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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.
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.
When eBay bought Skype in 2005, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and AOL all added talent, bought technologies and beefed up their messenger products. Six years’ later, how will Microsoft’s rivals respond to Microsoft buying Skype? Apple. FaceTime gets more headcount, gets group video, comes out on Windows, distributed with QuickTime and iTunes. Maybe by WWDC. Google. Renewed commitment to build out Google Voice. Internal partnership with YouTube speeds up, seeking to enable live video conversation in comments, Ustream-style broadcasting, and WebEx-style video meetings. Salesforce. Has Chatter, buys TokBox for video chat at scale, developer channel dives in and video enables customer service. Facebook. Waits for Skype cloud services to power next generation of fb chat. Aol. Reinvests in AIM. For six months. Then partners with Microsoft/Skype for sign in and text chat interoperability. Comcast. AT&T. BT. Orange. Myopic attempts to squeeze old POTS into new media. (Think Morse code mobile app.) Cisco. Spins out video conferencing products as their own company, refocuses on networking products. 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.
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. Congrats to the Google Voice team for the new feature. Points out the power of a gazillion page views by a bazillion users if you want to drive traffic, produce useful data. Next step: YouTube video conferencing. I’ve been using Julian Bond’s free Twype Windows app for years to pipe my latest tweet into my Skype mood. Update once, see my thoughts everywhere.
But the more I use FourSquare, Gowalla and Meetup mobile apps and play around with Facebook Places and Google Latitude, check-in services seem closer in spirit to how people use Skype mood messages. Check-ins signal where I am to my contacts. Check-ins share places I think are interesting to my friends and colleagues. Check-ins let you know I’m travelling or out of the office for the day. So, Footfeed, how about piping check-ins to Skype moods? Check in with me any time. Skype me, call me at +1-510-343-5664, follow @evanwolf and @SkypeJournal. Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats. Google announced they are closing their automated business directory assistance service. Why? GOOG-411 has done its job. Google lives for data. They now have four years’ data.
From this multimillion minute corpus (a billion minutes?) they can extract first order data.
From this they can cook up new algorithms that print money.
This can all be used to target mobile and web advertising and to add features to other products. So Google’s ready for new speech data sources and contexts. "We’re putting all of our resources into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages." A glance at the Google properties:
I’ll miss Goog-411. Suggestions for free alternatives that work as well? Call me at +1-510-343-5664, Skype me, follow @SkypeJournal and @evanwolf. Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats. Serge Lachapelle blogs it. Turn it on in Gmail > Settings > Labs > Video chat enhancements. "Enables new features in Gmail voice and video chat, including higher resolution and bigger windows, with more improvements coming over time." Call me at +1-510-343-5664, Skype me, follow @SkypeJournal and @evanwolf. Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats. analysis | architecture | Business | Developer Zone | facebook | google | identity | platforming | skypeforbusiness | SkypeKit | Technology
More than 500 million people have Skype names but they only use them to sign in to Skype. Meanwhile Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, MySpace and LinkedIn provide portable identity to their customers. The chart is courtesy of a Gigya.com report on multiple identity services. Identity providers offer:
People are more likely to use existing accounts than to create account new ones. A "Register with Facebook" button, for example, transfers trust to the new site and lowers the effort to explore it. Site operators love the higher conversion rate since more people sign up. Once you’ve registered using a trusted authority, the new site doesn’t need to worry about your changing passwords or your profile. Your trusted authority, like Google or LinkedIn, knows your latest account information and takes care of authorizing you. Your identity provider can also share your data with other sites. Different providers choose different data to share.
They commonly share your proper name, email, nickname, bio photo, profile URL, birthday, gender, location and a list of your contacts (your social graph in socialmedia speak).
Skype would be able to share most of those fields and more. Skype’s data model also offers mood message (like a tweet that lasts), primary language, time zone, and availability. Skype also has phone numbers (the ones where you forward SkypeIn call), online numbers (where you call and Skype rings) and Skype names. Skype is missing a vast opportunity. Being an OpenID and OAuth provider reinforces your brand during more of each customer’s day, in more ways. It provides valuable behavioral data. It helps customers choose their primary trustee for their profile data, their contacts and friends, their media, and their conversation history. Skype is rolling out their platform products starting with SkypeKit and continuing toward Communications as a Platform. "Sign In With Skype" could be great bait for Skype’s developer program. Unfortunately, Skype’s identity model is soooo last century.
Some of these defects are structural, requiring serious reengineering. Other fixes would be additive, feasible within a few quarters. Skype has a chance to build its identity technology, bring it to market, to win hearts and minds. Is it on Skype’s roadmap? Call me at +1-510-343-5664, Skype me, follow @SkypeJournal and @evanwolf. Updated: 10 July 2010: Added "Sign In With Skype" button mockup Hubert Nguyen’s detailed review of Google‘s
Hubert, you’re running into the Verizon-Skype exclusive. Nexus One is only available from T-Mobile so no Skype mobile (at least the voice parts) for you. Count on being shut out this year and most of next year too. Skype mobile (née Skype Lite) on your phone So your Nexus One Skype app can’t find a Skype server at T-Mobile. So you get an error message. Perhaps your error message should read: “Not available with your mobile carrier” or “Not available with T-Mobile; Click http://verizonwireless.com/skypemobile/ for options” or “Have you seen the Droid Incredible? Time to switch!” Skype’s Jonathan Christensen blogged Google’s move to open up VP8 benefits everyone. Codec openness is the key to ubiquity. Today Google announced they are freely licensing the VP8 video codec, open sourcing it, and sharing it through the WebM project. Skype was listed as a software partner. Google is following the same path Skype did with Skype’s SILK audio codec; free and now in the IETF standards process.
Codec ubiquity is key to universality. When everyone has one codec family, developers need not encode for hundreds of different players. When one codec is in everyone’s hands, you have confidence your media and your web app will work. Ubiquity and universality means your video works everywhere. Google brought Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome into WebM. Still to go: Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Some people dream of Skype in your browser, car, clock radio and flashlight. WebM helps that vision come true. Skype for Windows 4.2 asks you to trust Skype with your login credentials to other sites, like Google. Just import contacts to see Skype ask for Google username and password. This is a classic password anti-pattern. It is a poor design choice in 2010 but it’s still seen in many major services.
A better choice: use oAuth so the third-party authenticates you, tells Skype you’re OK, and then gives Skype limited access to your account. In this case, Skype would let Google authenticate you so Skype never sees or stores your Google credentials. We’ll see if the next major release of the Skype clients and core services retire the password anti-pattern. Mark Spencer’s speech to the Spring 2009 Emerging Communications Conference at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. His slides on Slideshare. eComm2010a looks hot and may sell out. I’ll be speaking, and so will thought leaders from Skype, Google, Cisco, and a host of others. |
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