UK’s OFCOM drags it’s heels on mobile net neutrality, leaving Skype users banned by many mobile operators. Same in other European markets. Jonathan Browning interviewed Skype’s Jean-Jacques Sahel, head of European regulatory affairs at Skype.
Skype PR supports a mountain climber who brings webcams to schools in developing countries.
 Your kids can Skype Santa (Florida time, Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays through 7 December, 4-5pm) @SandestinResort.
I met a bunch of people at the Enterprise 2.0 conference who don’t use Skype, more who only use it for family video calls, a few who use it for international calls, and several who’ve never been interested enough to try it. It reminds me that, with roughly 180 million active users worldwide and likely only 30 million active in the US and Canada, Skype has a greenfield of more than 200 million North Americans who aren’t using Skype. Building market reach looks like an important strategic goal through 2015. Skype’s net adoption rates (adoption less abandonment) have been large but linear. How will Skype redesign their products and rebalance their portfolio so net adoption rates accelerate?
New rumors iChat may come to iOS. So far it looks like IM, not voice or video. I’d be more interested f iChat came to operating systems outside the Apple universe.
Looks like Microsoft (and therefore Skype) support the horrendous SOPA bill moving through the US Congress. Al ex Wilhelm: “Microsoft is a major player in the Business Software Alliance, along with Apple and 27 other companies. And the BSA supports SOPA.” Learn more and do more to prevent the Internet Blacklist laws.
Pre-flight check in at Sheremetyevo International Airport over Skype. @svo_skype connects you to an operator for an interview, like a video call CAPTCHA. News release: Now for “flights operated by Air Astana, Royal Air Maroc, China Eastern Airlines, Estonian Air, Hainan Airlines, Hong Kong Airlines, Iran Air, Jat Airways, Turkish Airlines, Transaero Airlines, Aerosvit, Ariana Afgan Airlines, Belavia , Dniproavia, Donbasaero, Nord Wind, Oren Air, Air Algerie” although Aeroflot hasn’t committed. Yet.
Skype Bra Fittings from Butterfly Collection Lingerie deliver personal service from the privacy of your home.
Brad Garlinghouse leaves AOL. A real loss.
Citigroup predicts a 2012 Amazon phone. Can’t wait for the “shop” button.
Skype pays musicians to sing Happy Birthday to your friends in their Say It With Skype Facebook app. All the flavors are great but I like The Parlotones’ cover.
New betas:  Skype 5.4 Beta for Mac and Skype 5.7 Beta for Windows, both approaching feature parity, both now with group screen sharing for Premium subscribers. You can IM and video call Facebook friends from within Skype, although this does not include voice calls (unless you unplug your webcam), conference calls or group video calls. Jonathan Rosenberg explains Skype is hosting supernodes on AWS EC2, is operating a gateway for Facebook identity/directory interop, the calls are flowing p2p through the Skype network, and Facebook is keeping some records about users and their activity. Darrell Etherington thinks this could make Skype even more popular, and Skype should integrate Facebook into Skype’s mobile and tablet apps. Skype promotional video for the release (QuickTime).
From my October 2010 Skypebook: 17 More On The Secret Facebook-Skype Roadmap:
- Sync contacts. Not just import, but synchronization. Keep my contacts fresh. TO DO.
- Sync user profile data. My Skype profile is shallow and often stale. Sync my profile data semi-automatically: “Do you approve this update?” TO DO.
- Sync availability. Online, Offline, Busy, In A Call, Do Not Disturb. Facebook has some presence indicators too, from their own chat and from their mobile clients. TO DO.
- Sync currency. What’s the exchange rate between Facebook credits and Skype credits? Let me pay for a long distance SkypeOut call with Facebook credits. TO DO.
- Facebook updates in the Skype contact list. Give me fresher social objects for talking with my contacts. Make it easier to sort contacts by the last time they updated, not just by alpha or the last time they talked with you. DONE.
- Skype history in Facebook’s timeline. Show my friends’ Skype history with me in my Facebook updates. Make it easier to dive back into a Skype conversation from the timeline. TO DO.
- Sync personas. Skype is already asking people to create multiple personas, so they log in with one ID for each job and another for home. Facebook will probably offer something similar so you can choose to keep your professional friends from learning too much about your hobbies and dating habits. Skype and Facebook will negotiate the data models and privacy policies that go with it. TO DO.
- People search. For all the importance of the Global Index to Skype’s operations, the real value is being able to find the right person to talk with. Both parties could do well to blend their search technologies to improve result relevancy and speed. TO DO.
- People recommendations. Skype can’t suggest people you might like or people you might know. Facebook can, so build recommendations into Skype. Skype has very specific data about times of day and places you call from and call to, which Facebook could use to improve recommendations. TO DO.
- Events and scheduling. One of the best social objects is an event. Before the call or chat we often plan and invite and schedule our talk. Skype should integrate with personal calendars and with public and semi-public event listings. Facebook’s have taken off as one of the top event directories along with Eventful and Upcoming. TO DO.
- Chat interop. My facebook friend chatting with me on facebook while I’m in my Skype chat. We each get the medium we choose. Lots of things to work out including persistence, behavior for adding people to a chat, privacy rules, encryption, archiving policy. STARTED.
- Groups sync. Facebook lists and groups should sync up with my Skype contact lists. Define once, update everywhere, always fresh.
- Voice enable facebook chat. TO DO.
- Video enable facebook chat. STARTED (No group video, no screensharing).
- Advertising exchange. Skype has a small but rapidly growing yellow pages business directory, the better for prospects to Skype and SkypeOut your salespeople. Faceskype can cross-sell ads, offer buy-once-and-show-up-everywhere campaigns, improve the sociability and relevance of Skype client ads, offer click-to-call features to Facebook advertisers, etc. TO DO.
- Location check-in sync. Start showing my Facebook Places check-ins in my Skype history and offer to let me check into Facebook Places using mobile Skype. TO DO.
- Workplace editions. Is Facebook’s Yammer-killer just a rumor? Skype is committing to the enterprise too, so both teams should be imagining together. TO DO.
Comcast briefed GigaOm on their new Skype product (720p@30fps webcam, RF remote control, adapter box with HDMI) and an app designed for television, coming early next year. Some integration with your Comcast account for importing contacts. Skype will only partner with Comcast for the next few years, so too bad if you are one of the 81% of customers served by other ISPs. You’ll have to buy a television with Skype inside or dedicate a computer to running Skype on your television.
Licensed family counseling and psychotherapy over Skype. The BC practice says “the new virtual service removes the factor of geographical proximity, and caters to clients who find traditional settings limiting.” Don’t miss your session because you’re in a small town or far from home.
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 Love the announcement about Facebook video chat powered by Skype. Lots of questions not answered. Here are a few. I’ll update with answers as they come in.
- Video calling API from Facebook?
- Video calling on the mobile Facebook app?
- Video calling on mobile browsers?
- Desktop browser compatibility?
- Is the video p2p or does it go through central servers?
- Are these calls subject to CALEA and other forms of lawful intercept?
- Are these calls encrypted?
- Are these calls using WebRTC and other emerging real-time web standards?
- Whose ToS apply?
- Does Skype presence show up as Facebook presence? vice versa?
- Available in all markets? China, where Skype is only supposed to operate through TOM-Skype?
- Rollout plans? Available to all users?
- What new privacy controls apply?
- Are all video calls saved for later replay?
- Can I start a video call and leave a video mail?
- Can we switch from video to voice during a call? At point of answer?
- Do both parties need a webcam for a call to complete?
- Can I video call a Facebook stranger?
- Can a Skype users call a Facebook user who is not a friend?
- Will Skype report Facebook users in the concurrently logged into Skype statistic?
Skype will power fb’s video chat.
“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.
AT&T (née T-Mobile) partnered with Vivox to offer a calling solution for Facebook users.
I think this is courting behavior.
All the dashing young bon-voipants are wooing Facebook, hoping for love and marriage.
Vivox usually partners directly with a platform operator, like game publisher CCP’s Eve Online or Linden Lab’s Second Life. The operator pays for customers to talk with each other for improved in-game experiences. Vivox serves 5 billion minutes monthly like that.
Facebook is being courted by nearly everyone, though. By Skype (even after merger announcement), by the dozen other small-fry calling apps that hope to be bought by Facebook, by internal teams that think they craft a better calling experience and integrate better, by TokBox who believes the future is video chat, and by at least one phone company business unit aspiring to telco2.0 platform status.
What better way to woo than to prove your love? To show what it would be like after the courting is over? The bobsled Vivox app is a display of conviction, a tangible promise of things to come. Sure, Vivox is letting the rich consumer brand pay for the limo, champagne and flowers. But Facebook knows this is Vivox’s romance and that they could have brought anyone to the dance.
Why can Vivox do this?
- Vivox constrains their scope to voice chat. No video. No IM. No presence. No file transfer.
- Vivox centralizes the directory lookup. So session initiation can cross services, bringing a Facebook contact into an Everquest 2 conversation.
- Vivox centralizes media service. Unlike Skype, Vivox runs all calls through their own server cloud. No peer-to-peer media streams.
Among other benefits, Vivox customers offload service availability, scale, capacity planning, and monitoring to Vivox.
Centralization lets Vivox innovate in interesting ways. Care to choose which audio streams a user hears in combat based on proximity to other avatars? Or to spatialize audio left-right based on point of view in the game? Vivox can give you the controls to do that.
Most important, in a case like Facebook, Vivox’s cloud is a snap (well, almost a snap) to integrate with your own platform or enterprise system. You wondered why eBay never managed to integrate Skype into the eBay experience? This is the technology reason: Skype could never offer a web API that eBay’s developers could bake into eBay’s services.
So if Skype is quietly courting Facebook, unlike Vivox’s flourish, what unannounced technologies could Skype bring to the dance?
I posted this answer to Quora in February. “Would Facebook pre-IPO stock be worth more if pooled with Skype stock?”
 First off, Facebook doesn’t need to buy Skype to get Skype features in 2011. Skype would be delighted if Facebook drove customers to create Skype accounts and chat/call from within the Facebook mobile apps.
But let’s imagine they are talking about mergers and acquisitions. I’m assuming Skype shareholders would swap Skype shares for Facebook shares. What’s in it for both investors?
For Skype’s investors, they are trading their own shot at an early IPO for a small piece of Facebook’s IPO, giving up control of Skype’s IPO timing and structure.
Skype is the largest company of its kind, continues to grow briskly, has a new management team releasing new products and generating new revenue streams at a brisk pace (2011 should be Skype’s first $billion revenue year), and can rightfully claim they are seizing an unfair share of the trillion dollar telecom industry. Let’s say performance and conditions are good and they value the company at $5B later this year. That’s a relatively quick and sure thing, compared to Facebook. Facebook’s IPO would be an order of magnitude larger, and comes with risks of scale.
Let’s look at it from the other side.
- Would Facebook’s investors be willing to dilute their ownership by another ten percent or so to bring in Skype?
- Would having Skype inside the company make Facebook stock worth another ten percent at IPO? a few years’ after IPO?
- Would Skype become less valuable as a Facebook company or division, lacking the neutrality to partner with other social network sites?
- Are the risks of post-merger business integration problems large enough to threaten the overall perception of the company?
- Would Skype’s we-sell-to-our-users strategy conflict with Facebook’s we-sell-our-users-to-advertisers strategy?
- Is it worth the net risks to keep rivals from buying Skype’s technology and market presence?
While there are some obvious operational synergies (both companies help people talk with each other), and untapped opportunities (enterprise customers, social group video), I can’t see why merging now would offer any advantages to their investors.
Beecher Tuttle speculated Skype bought the assets of group text startup 3Jam. Skype’s texting features are… uninspiring? Hiring 3Jam’s Enlai Chu might fix that. Or is it feature creep?
CallByText compromises Skype security, requiring your Skype name and password, setting you up for identity theft. (Thanks, Hudson)
Reuters reports Google and Facebook talked about buying Skype. They didn’t talk to each other, although that would be interesting. Like this is something new? Skype’s corporate affairs folks must talk to potential buyers, if only to understand a non-IPO deal space.
Transit Telecom screws Brazilian Skype users, cancelling Números Online Skype, using the service since January 2006.
Sony firmware update adds Skype to Bravia TVs.
3CX adds Skype Connect to its Windows PBX software.
Azerbaijan minister wants to ban Skype as a security risk. via Tamada Tales.
Ubergizmo unboxes the Logitech TV Cam for Skype. “At CES 2011, Skype on TV was a huge hit, particularly among seniors. I’ve never seen so many seemingly retired people at CES, and they were almost all excited by this.”
Mumbai police analyze Skype calls to find gangsters.
Australian Skype for Vodafone mobile users will pay $3 monthly for Skype-to-Skype calls. Cheaper than previous plans.
California “elder law” attorneys to bill for Skype consultations. “…legal documents professionally produced in a virtual law firm environment.”
MyChelle Dermaceuticals licensed estheticians to bill for Skype consultations. “MyChelle’s expert team is on-hand to provide professional, effective treatment and skin care recommendations with a custom selection of pure, clean MyChelle Dermaceuticals products.”
Skype’s Skytools framework used to “construct a large fault-tolerant cluster of PostgreSQL.” Hundreds in production. Skytools.
Patch to Skype for Mac zero day vulnerability coming next week.
“The new interface is faster than before, and lets you see more content in the same amount of screen space.” I haven’t seen it in my client but maybe it’ll show up later. What do you think of this Skype art?
Update: I had to restart Skype to see it. First I was asked to reauthorize the Skype app.
I logged in to Facebook and was asked to for permission.
I allowed Skype to do the usual, but with more of my Facebook personal data and social graph.
I get a glimpse of the new tab, just for a second…
and then I get kicked back to authentication.
Maybe I’ll have some luck with it later.
Want to show Facebook you’re partner material? Get your app into Facebook’s top-ten.
Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger app for Facebook has been growing steadily in use and adoption. 14.5 million daily average users, 17.3 million monthly uniques. Frankly, that’s about one tenth of Skype’s activity. What’s meaningful is that this is just the share of WLM activity within Facebook.
If I’m Facebook, I want users to spend more time on my site (world domination) so I can sell their attention to advertisers (ARPU).
If this works for WLM users, why not GTalk, Yahoo!, Tencent, and Skype users? As a hub, Facebook can offer other networks more IM activity with Facebook social objects (those things we chat about). As a hub, Facebook can offer two great advantages to users: access to more of their contacts and network independence.
Where does Skype fit in?
- Skype will get its private gateways beefed up so Skype IM can flow across the Facebook message hub.
- The industry is begging for a Rich Presence Roadmap summit, so presence becomes more useful, not less, with proliferation of devices and partners. Skype me, I’d be glad to host.
- Skype’s user experience folks should start prototyping how to present people search, presence, profiles, and descriptions of access points for “alien” users. This is a hunt for metaphors; I’d start with twitter’s “via” attribute.
- These networks are not the same, so not all features are available everywhere. For example, Skype lets you edit an IM message and send IM even when the person is offline. A list of services provided by each partner would let the clients constrain user behavior to what is possible, and to provide appropriate informational messages.
- Skype Live for the browser. Voice, video, desktop sharing, conferencing, etc. Skype’s best opportunity to differentiate among the other IM networks.
- SkypeKit mobile. I know that’s asking a lot, but the app world would love to easily build Skype features into their mobile apps. And Facebook mobile will want to be a full client in Facebook’s hub.
What am I missing?
Ken Deeter blogs how Facebook engineers had to rethink their architecture to offer live comments. “Every minute, we serve over 100 million pieces of content that may receive comments. In that same minute, users submit around 650,000 comments that need to get routed to the correct viewers.” The server farms that served 99% of content couldn’t do the job for the fewer than 1% users comment on. The new architecture moved from polling (asking servers periodically if there’s an update) to push. Push needs to know who’s seeing what right now, and to keep that data fresh. This called for new ways to get an update on one page to the viewers of that page, bypassing server networks optimized to help people read web pages. As described, it sounds a lot like publish-subscribe or PubSubHubbub within Facebook’s server network.
The new plumbing for synchronous communication can power more than Facebook comments. You’ll want it for live instant messaging and interop with other IM networks, for email, for SMS-web integration, and for their new groups messaging.
I’m just asking. Skype will be reporting about $1 billion in revenue this year. Profitable every quarter for years. Spritely growth in revenue and usage. Adjacent markets for them to enter, like business conferencing, event search and scheduling, collaboration, cloudwork delivery. Platform plans for consumer electronics, mobile apps and web services.
What’s cooler is that they get nearly all of that revenue from paying users. That’s right: Skype users are also its customers.
I love MG’s, $1 Billion Isn’t Cool. You Know What’s Cool? $50 Billion. Goldman And Facebook Agree headline. Facebook’s customers are the advertisers. Its users are the product sold to advertisers.
Seems to me valuing Skype around $2 billion when its own users pay $1 billion yearly for its services seems… restrained? Mild?
Are you undervalued too? Chat with me on Skype. Call me at +1-510-316-9773 (my mobile), follow on twitter @evanwolf (everything) and @SkypeJournal (just the posts). Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats, where we’re talking about this right now.
I’ll speculate a little on this question.
- Do IM First. Facebook still hasn’t mastered text chat, and they may be waiting to perfect IM usability, performance, presence, persistence, and interoperability before adding richer modes.
- Engineer for Cost Control. It is hard to do video chat well and cheaply. While you can route one-to-one video streams in a p2p way between users, nearly all group video calling uses servers in some way, paying bandwidth and some media transcoding.
- Design for Facebookers. It is not obvious how to best blend video chat user experience’s into Facebook’s many contexts and use cases.
- Product Positioning. Facebook may want to offer differentiators and those may take time to build.
- Platforming. Facebook will want to offer group video chat features through its developer APIs, and those usually take longer.
- Supplier Readiness. Skype‘s video chat platform is not quite ready for public consumption, should Facebook decide to partner.
- ROI. It’s not clear the best way to monetize video chat. Since video chat is likely to cost real cash, Facebook will need to measure indirect benefits (like more time on site, higher conversation levels, more friends, more likely to find a job) and consider more direct means (premium feature, underwriting/sponsorship, advertising).
- Risk Avoidance. Video poses new security and policy concerns. Could Facebook turn into Chatroulette? Should you be able to opt-out of sending video in calls and just receiving? Thinking through those issues and others, and turning your new policies and plans into action, takes time. Facebook’s been bitten before.
- Little compulsion. Where’s the competitive pressure driving haste? Skype, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MySpace and Google video chat haven’t harmed Facebook. So Facebook doesn’t feel an urgent need to rush video to market.
Feel free to friend me on Facebook and fan Skype Journal’s Facebook page. But you can always call me at +1-510-444-8234, Skype me, follow @SkypeJournal and @evanwolf. Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
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.
 Just a quick thought about social ties. Usually we think along the dimension of strong ties (people we are close to) vs. weak ties. For example, Skype is mostly for strong tie relationships and Twitter is mostly for weaker tie relationships. That’s why Skype and Facebook don’t belong together.
You can model two other dimensions in social network analysis.
Time and context. eBay relationships are different from Skype relationships along both of those dimensions.
eBay contacts are typically ephemeral: brief and not renewed. We may share a camaraderie with people in line with us at the supermarket checkout, in the hospital waiting room, or when stuck in traffic. We expect those short relationships to end promptly.
Skype relationships are typically enduring; multiple conversations, often over long periods. There’s an element of trust.
You can see how SkypeBay integration could be problematic. Do you want to give your Skype contact information to everyone waiting to buy the Elvis PEZ dispenser? That would be unusual.
Context is the other dimension. eBay relationships come with their broad buying/selling context and the topicality of a specific market. The community is different if you’re shopping for collectibles, like Elvis PEZ dispensers, vs. cars. Skype relationships get their contexts from outside of Skype; Skype’s services don’t offer or guide their context.
If you want Skype to be part of your product, to add live talk with your social graph, remember to consider all three social tie dimensions: strength, time, and context.
I hope our relationship will be multidimensional. 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.
Has it been a whole year since an angry rant? Despite all of Skype’s glowing press, I’m sure I can scrape something up…
- UI Not Scriptable.
![opentabs560[4]](http://skypejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/opentabs5604_thumb.jpg "opentabs560[4]")
It’s great that Skype offered their idea of the facebook-in-Skype experience. What about the ideas of the world’s millions of developers? Where’s the app platform that lets users write and share their own tab in Skype? That lets us customize the metadata we show about contacts? We’re in the app economy and Skype should let us embed apps. Skype is our conversation and relationship manager for our intimate circle, for our strong-ties, and this is where we want to innovate.
Innovate Elsewhere.
- Still Deal Driven. Facebook? Skype still works on "It’s who you know" for doing business. Skype partnered with News Corp’s MySpace when it was hot, federating user names. Now Skype partners with Facebook. I’m happy for Skype’s bizdev and engineering teams but this is lazy strategy. Message sent: innovators and entrepreneurs and creatives need not apply. Make it as easy for anyone to make their own "Home" tab as it is for them to add or make make a Firefox extension, an RSS feed in Google Reader, or an iPhone app.
Ecosystem-free Ecosystem.
- Import, not sync. Batch importing guarantees your Skype contact list is stale five minutes later. You can import your facebook contact into Skype but Skype won’t keep your data fresh. So when your contacts update their names, photos, locations, phone numbers or emails, those critical changes won’t show up in your Skype contact list. I’m behind before I get started.
Lame.
- No group video pricing. Don’t try Skype group video. Like offering free crack, Skype rolled out ten-way video calling in a "28 day free trial." Skype won’t tell you now what happens at the end of the trial. Free three-way calling? $100/minute ten-way calling? Free with a business account? Included with a monthly global subscription? You’ll find out the real cost once you and your friends are hooked.
Bait, Switch.
- Not for Mac, Mobile, Linux. Skype’s ugly step-child Mac users seethe with frustration and anger as Windows users get the cool stuff months or years before they do. Companies with products connecting to Skype through Skype’s Linux client are also left behind. Mobile users? Still waiting for their first group chats, video calls, and file transfers.
Tired of Windows Hand Me Downs.
- Half an API. Skype’s Public API hasn’t been updated to use any of Skype 5′s new features. No video conferencing, no facebook, no contact import. Why is Skype punishing its developer community? Why is Skype still crippling its only publicly available API? See "Still Deal Driven."
Developers should try Ribbit, Tokbox, Twilio, and Voxeo.
- Fraud inducing identity model. Skype is asking you to lie about who you are. Skype 5 says you have to keep separate Skype names for each place you work and for your life. It might be feasible if Skype software let me log into and use several Skype identities at the same time. They don’t. That’s not how people work and live. More than fifteen percent of the US workforce are free agents, with dozens employers each year. Nobody will use a communication tool that must be shut off just because you’re at work. Or just because you go home. Ask a cultural anthropologist. Ask an industrial psychologist. Ask any volunteer at a not-for-profit. Ask anybody who works and has kids. This deviation from reality is for the convenience of Skype’s lawyers, engineers, financial analysts, and marketers. It sure isn’t for Skype users.
Put the experience designers back in charge.
- Plaintext IM and mood. This is a small thing with a big message. Skype is the only large IM network using plain text characters in IM. No rich text, HTML, inline images, or inline videos. This is a steep barrier to IM interop. It means messages from other networks must be dumbed down to show them to Skype users. Your chats will lose meaning. Skype participants will see and understand less than non-Skype participants. This is a reason business users will abandon Skype.
#ClosedWebFoo.
 I’m not picking at the small stuff. These failures signal flawed design thinking, poor product leadership, weak organization design, and insular corporate values.
Skype is full of people around the world working hard on the underlying problems. The new management team should find them and give them room to confront Skype’s culture, leadership and identity problems. Call me if you’d like to talk about it. #designskype
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7 years and 12 days since Skype Journal launched as a stand-alone blog.
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ex Wilhelm: “Microsoft is a major player in the Business Software Alliance, along with Apple and 27 other companies. And the BSA supports SOPA.” Learn more and do more to prevent the Internet Blacklist laws.
![opentabs560[4]](http://skypejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/opentabs5604.jpg "opentabs560[4]"){kind=small}
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