 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 just caught two Asterisk notes. First, Digium CEO Danny Windham boiled down the big Microsoft-Skype story into one headline: Microsoft plus Skype, equals Microsoft. My favorite lines:
What of the potential benefits resulting from plans for Skype integration into Microsoft’s business-class communication products, such as Lync? That remains a mystery, and calls into question the level of commitment that Microsoft will make to open standards and to widespread integration.
Is the acquisition good for Skype? Given the valuation, it’s certainly good for the Skype shareholders. But what about the service itself? In a word, no. History suggests that Microsoft’s tendency towards notoriously proprietary tactics will slow the development of Skype as a business tool. Will Microsoft wall-off Skype from competing products, completely? Or, at a bare minimum will Microsoft ensure their products work much better with Skype than those from competitors? Time will tell.
That was May 13th, the Wednesday after the announcement. Now, eleven days later, some news via email.
Product notification:
Skype for Asterisk will not be available for sale or activation after July 26, 2011.
Skype for Asterisk was developed by Digium in cooperation with Skype. It includes proprietary software from Skype that allows Asterisk to join the Skype network as a native client. Skype has decided not to renew the agreement that permits us to package this proprietary software. Therefore Skype for Asterisk sales and activations will cease on July 26, 2011.
This change should not affect any existing users of Skype for Asterisk. Representatives of Skype have assured us that they will continue to support and maintain the Skype for Asterisk software for a period of two years thereafter, as specified in the agreement with Digium. We expect that users of Skype for Asterisk will be able to continue using their Asterisk systems on the Skype network until at least July 26, 2013. Skype may extend this at their discretion.
Skype for Asterisk remains for sale and activation until July 26, 2011. Please complete any purchases and activations before that date.
Thank you for your business.
Digium Product Management
 I think it’s simple housecleaning on Skype’s part. Skype for Asterisk has little usage, is redundant with existing and future Skype products, and offers no revenue to speak of. Former Skype Journal anchor Jim Courtney IM’d this was probably in the works before the Microsoft deal.
Others worry Skype’s killing SFA is a dark portent of things to come under Microsoft’s ownership. Fred Posner no longer dreams “of a more friendly, open, Skype under Microsoft.” Dan York hears others tweet support for his fear of a new Skype era under Microsoft.
So, Danny, do you think Skype could be much more proprietary and closed under MSFT?
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.
 A new entry level Logitech LifeSize video conferencing system now comes with two points of Skype integration. First, there’s a SkypeKit-based Skype client inside the LifeSize Passport. So you can log in with your Skype account and call or answer people in the Skype network or SkypeOut to phone numbers. Second, your Skype contacts now show up in the Logitech Passport’s directory. Passports will sell for under $2500. Sadly, there are no demos or screenshots. Here are LifeSize’s celebratory news release, the Skype partner page, blog post and Skype’s blog post. I’ll share more info if I get it.
Three observations.
First, SkypeKit must be maturing for this to come out; LifeSize is small enough that they can’t afford product risks with iffy components.
Next, someone at Skype did a yeoman’s job of reviving what must have been a strained relationship after being unable to deliver needed software since 2009. Job well done, team.
Last, having Skype inside your video conferencing system could well become a must-have. The ultimate market reach for 720p interop with a partner that won’t muscle into your market (cough-cisco-cough).
Dave Michels at No Jitter offers more context on this announcement. “It had appeared none of the enterprise video players were ready to acknowledge Skype (yet), and that’s why this announcement is so significant.”
Valve’s Steam MMO RPG game delivery system (rent, don’t buy; play without downloads; one identity across games; common APIs) will use the free SILK codec. This will build SILK’s wideband audio quality into the Steam player, although games may exploit it. Correction: You do in fact buy games; but the games have the option of storing and using social elements from the Steam cloud: PTT, saving games, or achievements. Steam is one of the largest game sales systems on earth, “a license to print money” one customer told me. They moved from the Speex codec to SILK but the driving forces are customer engagement. The higher the voice chat fidelity, the better you communicate, the more you enjoy the team aspects of gameplay, and the longer you play. Good for all.
The announcement:
Steam’s voice chat system now leverages the SILK audio codec, developed and used by Skype, makers of the world’s most popular voice communication service. The SILK codec provides a significant quality improvement over Steam’s previous voice technology, at the cost of some increase in bandwidth usage. Steam Voice used to require 15 kbps of bandwidth, whereas SILK is a dynamic bit rate protocol which varies in its use of bandwidth between 8 and 30 kbps, depending on the range of data in the voice signal and current network conditions.
As of today’s Steam client update, voice chat using SILK is available to all users of Steam. To start using Steam chat with SILK, simply click the ‘Start Voice Chat’ button within a friend or group chat on Steam. You can access chat from both the friends list at the desktop, or while in game using Steam’s in-game overlay. You’ll find voice chat connectivity and reliability have also been improved with this release.
Steam chat with SILK is now also automatically available for all games that take advantage of the Steamworks Voice API. Valve’s own Portal 2, set to release in mid-April, uses this newly updated system to enable voice chat in its cooperative gameplay mode.
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?
From Skype’s blog post launching in-client ads, did you notice the user account in the upper-left corner? MeeboSkype? As in Meebo, the browser-based chat company? This could be a head fake; I can’t find MeeboSkype in the Skype phone book.
But what if it’s a slip? Would Meebo be a good partner or acquisition for Skype? Their products are complimentary:browser-based IM chat rooms, browser and web-site plug-ins, and mobile apps. How much more would Skype be worth with great browser-based clients?
Just a rumor, for now. tips@SkypeJournal.com if you hear anything.
Update: Meebo is already a Skype partner: If you want to buy ads for the US market, email ads@meebo-inc.com.
Cisco sells video calling and video conferencing as “collaboration.” Not true. It’s a medium for communication. Communication is not collaboration. Here’s what their pitch looks like:
Full Story »
Skype’s newly announced Mobile Partner Program for operators continues work it has done with mobile operators Verizon (US), KDDI au (Japan) and Hutchison 3 (UK). In each case Skype offered thin clients for mobile phones that talked to the Skype cloud through gateways hosted at the operator’s data centers. This meant lighter use of 3G broadband and deployment on a wider range of mobile phones.
Skype’s thin-client/fat-server approach moves most of the heavy bandwidth and processing to the operator-Skype gateways from the phone. Skype voice calls travel over the mobile voice channel using normal mobile quality, not on the mobile broadband data channel. Contrast this with the full Skype client like Skype for iPhone, where the mobile device is a node on the Skype network and voice, video and data travel over the wireless or Wi-Fi data channels. Full clients use Skype’s wideband audio codecs for cinema quality sound, where thin clients produce and consume normal, clipped, mobile phone sound quality.
So this is looking like three product tiers:
- Skype
Litemobile for 3G with light broadband coverage and low smartphone penetration.
- Skype full clients for 3G and Wi-Fi.
- Skype rich clients for 4G, ready for mobile video calling, video conferencing, and the latest smartphones.
Skype’s booth at MWC is at stand 7D49.
Skype Access is a little known feature of Skype. It lets you buy Wi-Fi access by the minute from more than five million hotspots. Access’s two selling points: pay by the minute only for what you need, and pay with Skype credits at 19 cents a minute (US$11.40/hour). Skype Access is free in Spain this week in honor of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Access partners include BT Openzone (UK), Fon, M3 Connect (Germany), Row 44 (in-flight), Skyrove (South Africa), Spectrum Interactive (UK), Tomizone (Australia, New Zealand, South Pacific ), Vex (South America). Skype ran promotions like this before in other markets.
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7 years and 12 days since Skype Journal launched as a stand-alone blog.
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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. 
Join the Skype 6.X Text Chat Room