So, now that Skype has XMPP for polling/updating servers, it looks like Skype is almost ready to connect the Skype network to other IM networks.
This is one more step to Skype interoperability, so Skype users can IM with friends and colleagues across the Microsoft IM products families and third-party networks. Sadly, XMPP is the easy part.
To complete IM interop, Skype just needs to add interoperability for:
User names
Trusted authentication
Profile attributes
User directory services
Yellow page directory services
Presence and mood messaging
Emoticon standards
Encryption
Spam and fraud prevention, and other security measures
Message queuing and caching
Privacy UX, controls, and disclosures
It’s not such a long list, right?
P.S. I had dinner with Jeremie Miller, the inventor of Jabber/XMPP last week, during his visit to Singly from Iowa. You really want to follow how the Locker Project is building personal data controls atop the p2p Telehash system. Telehash, when done, might be an open source alternative to large parts of Skype’s “global index” that Skype’s founders ransomed for a big share of Skype stock two years’ ago.
A short interview with Adam Kalsey (@akalsey) introducing Voxeo‘s Tropo API. Tropo makes programming for telephony easier and cheaper to build for small business and independent developers.
Shot on the demo floor in Moscone West at Google I/O. Also there: Kaazing (whose definition of realtime doesn’t include voice or video), Meebo (multiplatform IM, voice conferencing and video conferencing but not for Skype since Skype doesn’t offer a gateway) and MySpace (tightly coupled with Skype using a private gateway). You can just feel that everyone would plug in to the Skype network in a heartbeat if only Skype hosted a cloud service.
Bkis blogged the new computer worm is targeting both Skype and Yahoo! Messenger IM clients. W32.Skyhoo.Worm sends encouraging messages with a web link to your contacts, some of whom may click through and download it as you did. A fast way to be de-friended. Be careful what you click, even from friends.
QQ now has more than a billion (1057MM) user accounts. Active accounts in the last two weeks of the quarter are just shy of half that at 484.9MM. Peak concurrent users rose to 75.5MM. Twice as many accounts and nearly four times as much dialtone as Skype.
QQ’s "Dialtone Density" (quarterly peak accounts online as a percent of the number of active accounts online) shows customers are spending more time connected with the QQ network.
Tencent explains their growth as "driven by the popularity of our SNS [Social Network Service] applications which enhanced user engagement and activity through cross-platform integration, as well as increased usage of our IM services through mobile devices."
Tencent has an adjacency strategy, adding businesses that complement their core QQ service and sharing common usernames.
So they have casual gaming, MMO games, FPS games, desktop games, enterprise IM, mobile, email, feedreader, security, media player, download manager, pinyin authoring, news and community portal, search, mobile games, mobile QQ, mobile music and ringtones, blogging, dating, facebooking, online fashion, live video, music sharing/streaming, ecommerce shopping and payment services. They all make money, either through premium services and virtual currency, or through a huge advertising network.
Tencent can deploy service after service because QQ runs on a massive centralized infrastructure. Skype will have to package core capabilities through APIs before they can speedily build new services and let partners build on the Skype network.
Q. What technology does BT/Ribbit have, making this possible, that Skype doesn’t? Q. Does this scale if Ribbit has to pay for each minute? Q. What advantages does decoupling chat from IM bring to users?
From the Ribbit blurb:
The Ribbit Conferencing Gadget allows Wave participants to escalate an online collaboration session to a real-time audio communications session, allowing participants to talk with each other while collaborating. The Conferencing Gadget is persistent in the Wave and allows any Wave participant to:
Create an audio connection with multiple Wave participants
Add non-Wave participants to the session
Mute or hold any of the individual participants from the stream
QQIM is expanding from its Chinese base with its 990 million user accounts and 448 million monthly active IM users. IMQQ.com is QQ’s new "global" portal for English speakers. At last report, China remains Skype’s largest market.
Last week Google announced Wave, a pre-alpha browser application project. The experience is like instant messaging but with the extensibility and variety you might find in facebook or OpenSocial applications. Wave can be highly decentralized, like email, with Wave servers hosted by any person or company that cares to. Wave clients run in browsers. (Good to know: Skype desktop clients have tiny browsers inside.)
Extensibility makes a container useful in more ways. Like adding new tools to your Swiss Army knife or multitool. Apps could change what goes on inside the chat. We will be able to combine them in interesting ways. To surround chat with useful information about people. To enrich ways we discover people to talk with, to initiate conversations, to conduct those conversations using the right tools for that conversation, and to use the history of those conversations meaningfully.
Wave solves several Skype problems:
One size doesn’t fit all. People are diverse. So are the ways we want to talk. Skype is mastering the middle ground, ignoring the long tail of experience demand.
Skype is closed. Promoting the Skype namespace so non-Skype users can chat with Skypers should increase demand for access to Skype services. New blood to boost the number of people in the Skype network.
Skype isn’t developer-bait. Skype might siphon off Wave talent. Opening up Skype to developers gives them immediate access to a world market, a great opportunity to bring them in to the Skype developer program. Done well, you might do without giving up control of Skype’s added value.
Skype doesn’t run in browsers. Waving the Skype desktop client could lead to a browser-based rich Internet application, a Skype that runs in a browser without a 20MB download.
The flip side is opportunity:
Skype meets more needs (lock-in in more markets).
Skype attracts new customers (faster word of mouth).
There’s still room to grow: no voice or video chat, no making or taking phone calls, no chat rooms or multichat, no gateway to Yahoo!’s IM partners (Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Lotus Sametime), no file transfer, no Yahoo! address book.
Yahoo!’s mobile messenger line also includes Y!IM for Sidekick, BlackBerry, and other phones.
No-VoIP Clause (Wi-Fi tethered). Apple’s deal with AT&T (and presumably Apple’s other carrier partners) forces Apple to force Skype off of mobile networks for voice or video calls. So Skype can only make or take calls when connected to the Internet through Wi-Fi.
No background apps (no Skype dialtone). Apple’s iPhone OS prevents multiple apps from running. So I can only have Skype dialtone when it is in the foreground. You need Skype dialtone, connection to the Skype network, to share presence, to get chat updates, to receive Skype calls. When iPhone OS 3 launches at the Apple WWDC, this may get better.
No eye (no video). Apple doesn’t have a camera looking at the user. Needed for video calls.
So Skype for iPhone is less than what it could be. Will customer pressure change AT&T’s and Apple’s attitudes?
Truphone, the internet telephony application for mobiles, has added AOL Instant Messenger to the list of IM systems it can interact with. Now, in addition to Google Talk, Skype, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo, you can chat with your AIM buddies while on Truphone on an iPod Touch or iPhone.
Truphone is also set to make another announcement tomorrow that they are calling ‘major’. I’ll post about it when I get more info from Mobile World Congress.
Skype Journal columnist Jason Harris, engages communities for corporations and explores internet telephony, mobile technology, and the leaders who bring them to market on his Techcraver blog and on Twitter.
XMPP is the data communication protocol used by Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Aol Instant Messenger, Microsoft Windows Live Messenger and most Jabber IM networks to connect users to each other. Skype’s new Windows 5.5 Beta comes with an XMPP engine, used to talk with Facebook’s servers, revealed when you look at the desktop client’s Internet traffic.
Truphone, the internet telephony application for mobiles, has added AOL Instant Messenger to the list of IM systems it can interact with. Now, in addition to Google Talk, Skype, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo, you can chat with your AIM buddies while on Truphone on an iPod Touch or iPhone.
Join the Skype 6.X Text Chat Room