Welcome to 2012 where Skype is joining Microsoft’s management culture. If we hearken back a few years, was politics one of the problems Skype had with eBay?
Skype in early 2005 was a mostly European team. They held what Americans would call liberal cultural values. Once sold to eBay, they tried to work with an eBay management team overtly embracing a conservative value system.
eBay’s management team strongly supported the US Republican party when they bought Skype in 2005 and in the years leading up to Meg Whitman’s support for 2008 GOP presidential and local elections and her 2010 run for California governor. Meg personally held eBay town hall meetings for eBay sellers across America, pressing the flesh and honing her retail political skills before declaring her candidacy. Much of eBay’s language invoked the rhetoric of populist and free market capitalism, rugged individualism, and small hands-off government. Meg and her management team donated heavily to Republican candidates, institutions and causes and many left in 2009 to work on her campaign.
In contrast, Skype avoided politics. Its lawyers were wary of telecom regulators. Its leadership was conscious that local politics didn’t fit its transnational scope and worldly staff. If anything, Skype started off embracing non-partisan geek culture, with an anti-establishment (“we’re taking on the phone companies”) and universal populism (“talk to the world for free”).
I don’t want to overstate the differences. Both teams cared about success, both spoke business, self-identified as leaders.
Yet something went wrong.
Skype was never properly integrated with eBay. I look to Whitman’s narrow charge to Skype’s founders and the technology myopia that followed. As part of the purchase, Whitman dangled a billion dollar payout to the founders if they met a few hard-to-meet goals relating to adoption, activity and revenue. The founders reacted by stifling all business and development activity that didn’t directly and quickly support those goals.
A side effect: strategic Skype technology was proposed but never seriously funded. If you want to integrate realtime conversation into eBay and PayPal experiences you need web services like cloud platforms for non-Skype developers. Skype desktop integration would never work in an environment where more than half of all eBay transactions passed through third-party applications. Had Skype had been thoroughly blended into the eBay buyer and seller experiences, would eBay have sold Skype?
Aside from executives desperate to make their gigadollar payday, eBay did little to promote integration. In fact, integration and synergy, while promised to eBay’s investors, was never a priority. eBay never appointed a VP, director, or even a manager to oversee their side of Skype integration.
With Skype’s third sale, (first being to VCs, second being to eBay), management was free from eBay culture but had private equity culture imposed. Politics wasn’t in the air; just decisiveness in preparation for sale.
And now Skype is at Microsoft, a company whose management is relatively quiet about politics, whose expedient corporate giving supports incumbents, and whose memories of painful encounters with the US Justice Department and many European regulatory bodies left a bitter caution for even talking politics.
Will Skype and Microsoft blend well? Do they share common geek and corporate values over more partisan and nationalistic ones? What core differences in world view could keep them from partnering well together? Could Skype be better off in the dynamic, rapidly growing entertainment division where radical innovation is ordinary or in one of the slow, staid and stable divisions where Skype might shine by contrast?
 Phil Wolff designs and positions realtime collaboration products, finds useful pivots, sees both both forests and trees. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
Big changes need an executive champion. When Jonathan Christensen left Skype last month, he was the last advocate for a developer-centered strategy.
 His departure is bad for Skype, bad for Microsoft, and bad for Skype’s users. This is good for rivals who understand github culture, developer programs, cloud operations, and API business strategy. Here’s why:
Skype’s third-party development products are failures.
- The Skype Extras program collapsed from tens of thousands of desktop apps to a few dozen before Skype shut the program down.
- Skype tried for a UI-free Skype engine but SkypeKit is unattractive. It’s feature-incomplete. It’s a time sync requiring orders of magnitude more effort (about twelve thousand hours for the first Skype-on-TV apps) than alternatives (1 hour for a TokBox or Twilio integration). It’s burdened with outrageous defensive business terms: Skype can withdraw your license at any time for any reason and you may not run SkypeKit on servers, sell your service to business, or serve Chinese markets.
- Skype is very late to the cloud communication market. Voxeo, Twilio, Jajah, TokBox, and Vidyo (powering Google Hangouts) have been offering hosted telephony and video conferencing APIs for mobile and web developers for years.
- Skype’s few developer successes rely on cultivating personal influence, on sycophantic access to Skype insiders. Unless you know someone, you don’t get the resources to build or the waivers to release your product. This doesn’t scale and comes off arrogant and sleazy.
This post-Christensen senior management team understands finished goods. They even understand freemium models. But their hearts don’t beat faster at the thought of Skype powering a million web sites and apps. Their eyes don’t light up when talking platform economics. Their guts don’t tell them to bet on APIs, to open up and let a million designers and programmers plug-in to the Skype network.
So management lacks ambition for platforming. This shows in underfunded cloud projects, a closed (vs. public) developer program, staff defections, and belittling expectations. From management’s behavior you’d think outrageous success by Skype developer partners should trigger a publisher’s acquisition or sudden death. Ouch. Real platformers consider customer successes proof your network is attractive.
Skype’s platform-avoidance strategy will fail, probably this year. Skype cannot hope to deliver meaningful integration at Microsoft without the Skype versions of OpenTok and Phono; they will hit a technology wall. And new users from Skype’s Microsoft products won’t hide the overall slowing of Skype user adoption and revenue, or high defection to services that meet specific needs in specific contexts. As Microsoft’s Bing, Xbox, Kinect, Windows, and Windows Phone know, APIs bring you new revenue and new markets.
Circumstance will drive Skype’s managers to an open cloud platform architecture.
They’ll need entrepreneurial leaders like JC to take them there.
But they’ll have to believe.
Do you believe in platforms?
photo: Jonathan Christensen
Phil Wolff designs and positions realtime collaboration products for effective people. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journalis independent of Skype.
The Communication Workers of America convened this week, rallying around their legislative agenda. Do you think Skype@Microsoft would be a good organizing target? Live talk is still fleeing to over-the-top services, outside the direct control of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Comcast.
Could CWA find fresh blood at Microsoft’s Skype, Google’s Motorola, Facebook, Aol, Yahoo!, et al? What workplace problems could collective bargaining solve for workers? Can the more white-collar and tech-friendly unions function in and relate to Silicon Valley and Redmond culture, rapid business tempo, labor-ignorant tech media, and free-agent labor markets? Can they adapt to how these organizations are distributed across cities, states, and countries? I think unions inspired to action by Occupy Wall Street demonstrate new life and leadership. They may be ready for the challenge.
If they want in, they should start now. It takes time to learn why those building our new conversational media seek collective power at work.
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?
Electronista writes up a new approach to Fast Fourier Transforms from MIT. It could improve signal processing ten-fold. The paper: “Nearly Optimal Sparse Fourier Transform.” When NOSFT finds its way into codecs, Skype users might find Skype working on devices with less computing power.
How many people use Skype? How much? @Skype tweeted yesterday:
- “Steve Ballmer announces new stat: Over 200 million avg. monthly connected #Skype users #CES”
- “And a 2nd new #Skype stat: More than 300 billion total calling mins annually, with approximately 50% being video calling mins #CES”
The 200 million average monthly connected users for December 2011 is consistent with an end-of-year bump as people substitute Skype for travel. Skype has been running weekly highs of 30+ million and lows of 15+ million concurrently connected for the last six months, more consistently high than in previous seasons.
Skype’s 300+ billion minutes of live talk is a little less than half the time people spend on Facebook, if we go by the 53.5 billion monthly minutes reported by Nielsen for May 2011.
Meanwhile, Skype continues stealing cross-border-calling minutes and hard currency from international telecoms, per Telegeography. PSTN traffic was 438 billion minutes in 2011 compared to their estimate of Skype’s 145 billion minutes; about 1 in 4 cross-border minutes are on Skype. This is up from about 1 in 5 last year.
Roughly half of all Skype minutes cross a national border if we trust these figures.
Skype is capturing share at a much faster pace than the international calling market as a whole:
Phil Wolff designs and positions realtime collaboration products for effective people. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
Congrats to Urban Airship, the mobile platform-as-a-service company, on landing former Skype strategy and bizdev czar Christopher Dean as their chief revenue officer.
BI reports Cisco’s telepresence unit is ending Umi, a webcam and set-top box for living room video calls. No patience for consumers to learn about it, no chance to iterate and find what works. Why is Cisco giving up on consumer products when the consumerization of corporate IT is at an all time high?
My top 15 for 2011.
15. Skype for iOS reboot. Launch and connect fast. Go back to basics and invent a tactile, visual experience. Pursue delight.
14. Skype for Metro. Miró me, baby.
13. Scriptable desktop and mobile clients. I want a bot API.
12. A social graph API for better integration with social networks and web services of all sizes and degrees of privacy. The world isn’t just MySpacebookIn.
11. Better people-search. Find the John Smith in a given city or who knows me on LinkedIn or who tweets about movies.
10. Skype cloud services. Hosting for developers.
9. LDAP client service, the better to have company directories inside my Skype clients.
8. Skype interop with WebRTC/RTCweb so off-the-shelf web browsers can make and receive Skype calls.
7. Free group video for three people. Build the habit.
6. Better whiteboarding than GoToMeeting. Especially on tablets.
5. A calendaring and scheduling API. Invite people to a Skype meeting, and launch them into it at the right time.
4. Formal launch of a “hangouts” feature.
3. Unleash developer terms of service. Freedom to deploy your Skype-inside apps on servers, to serve businesses, and reach the Chinese market. Freedom from Apple-like app pre-approval by Microsoft employees.
2. China User Transparency. Skype for desktops are delivered with censorware and who-knows-what-else to users in China and Hong Kong. Help me know who to trust. Show me which client they are using (safe, subject to lawful interception, and/or poisoned at the client), how their communication first enters the Skype network (a Skype desktop client, a server gateway, a SkypeKit app), jurisdictions where my conversation is routed (by country), and the physical location of the other parties (subject to their privacy preferences). Help us trust the Skype network at least as much as we trust governments and the Internet.
1. Digital Identity reboot. Skype’s identity systems are stuck in 1995. The world and our lives are more complex. Without a serious rethink, Skype will lose out on partnerships, Microsoft integration, enterprise integration and millions of users. On that roadmap, if you choose to accept it: Multiple profiles per account. Multiple forms of authentication. Permissions and relationships by profile. Shared profiles (roles). Transferable profiles. ToS by role. Sign in with Skype. I’d be pleased to introduce you to the world’s identity practice leaders at the next Internet Identity Workshop this Spring.
Bonus points:
Skype for Kinect. Gestural interface, baby. Bonus points for multilingual fingerspelling.
Emergency Dialing. Save lives, please.
Phil Wolff builds realtime collaboration products for effective people. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
I consulted with companies wanting to compete with Skype. Some, like Yahoo!, wanted to understand Skype’s technology and APIs so they could match it. Large telcos wanted a map of Skype’s ecosystem. Startups wanted to position themselves against Skype’s brand to secure funding. That’s mostly over.
Skype is much less interesting now.
Skype remains powerful, racing to keep up with growth and scale and new opportunities. But the Skype Stuart Henshall, Bill Campbell and I blogged about from launch in 2003 to eBay’s purchase in 2005 is only vaguely like today’s organization.
Skype is a top dog, not an underdog. Direct rivals all walked away from trying to beat Skype, looking now to coexist or even partner.
Skype is one-sixtieth of the Microsoft behemoth, its story chained to a broader narrative.
Skype is less unique, with hundreds of companies delivering high quality talk and conferencing services over mobile and internet connections.
Skype didn’t look innovative in 2011. Or 2010. Or 2009. Or 2008. The core products haven’t changed much. Nobody expects Skype to produce startling breakthroughs in 2012.
Skype staff don’t talk to the public. A wall of corporate silence sanitizes their conversations; Wall Street banks have more open bloggers.
Skype abandoned its revolutionary People’s Product identity, where it was destined to radically disrupt phone companies. It worked hard to become a GlobalConsumerBrand telco, just like all the other phone telecoms.
Skype is clearly pleased with being boring.
Skype should end 2011 with about a thousand employees, about a billion dollars in sales, a portfolio of more than a dozen clients and a few platform products, and hundreds of millions of users.
Most of Skype’s work in 2012 will be more of the same. Getting new users. Holding onto existing users. Inducing users to Skype more. Putting Skype on more devices. Keeping the network running. Boosting ARPU. Diversifying revenue.
Boring stuff.
Blogworthy only for investors, partners and direct competitors.
“A skypes B” was the non-M&A news story of 2011. Soldier with family. Classroom with sick student. President with campaigners. Orangutan to orangutan. The same generic story of people using Skype instead of a telephone.
Stories we didn’t see in 2011:
- No new patents filed (they did file, but didn’t tell that story).
- No jaw dropping technologies (Skype continues to invest in anti-POTS technology but doesn’t tell that story).
- No shareworthy user experiences (Skype had a “hangouts” feature before Google but never told that story).
Skype keeps its product innovation stream burbling underground, submerged, hidden. It’s hard and useful stuff, improving Skype’s plumbing and availability. But users just don’t see it.
Skype is no longer a revolutionary or disruptive brand. Can Skype inspire again? Capture passion? Define a moral conviction for users to love and support? Should Skype try?
Zennstrom decides to disrupt another fat, usurious, oligopolic industry: wireless broadband. “FreedomPop is aimed at making access to the Internet over wireless free.” “The Internet is a right, not a privilege.“
Free calls from Google Talk in the US and Canada through 2012.
Skype for Android 2.6 release added new features.
Skype for iPad 3.6 and Skype for iPhone 3.6 fixed a few bugs, improved stability, minor UI improvements and fixed a problem with chat deletion.
Skype updates its Firefox and Chrome browser toolbars on Windows, speeding Click-to-Call markup and improving compatibility. Which release of IE will come with a Skype plug-in preinstalled? When will Skype offer a click-to-call service for content management systems? And when will Skype add people-search to browsers? With all the browser publishers working to build in realtime IM/voice/video/ communication protocols in 2012 releases, a widely adopted browser plug-in is an important point of future customer contact.
 Skype’s man in Washington, Chris Libertelli, now leads the Netflix government affairs team. While at Skype his deft touch with the FCC helped Skype assure access in US markets and partner with wireless operators. He also led Skype’s government affairs operations for the US states, Canada and Latin America. Paul Bond says usage-based-billing is the hot issue. With Chris on hand, I expect net neutrality to continue to be on Netflix’ agenda but take a backseat to battling for Netflix and its customers’ right to stream. Skype hasn’t announced who will fill Chris’ shoes.
A November 18 Survey: Mobile operators predict they’ll lose SMS traffic to Skype and other messaging apps. Mavenir’s survey says they’ll respond with IMS services. Good luck with that: BGR reports there are almost a million apps for the major mobile platforms.
A Forbes reporter rehashes an October New York Post security story about a few NYU-Polytechnic researchers who use Skype’s peer-to-peer network to see user IP address. Then they layer on hype that this is a security flaw. This is odd: having two computers see each other’s IP addresses is how the Internet works, unless you want your data run through an intermediary. Intermediaries pretty much defeat the point of a p2p network. Here’s the research citation: S. LeBlond, C. Zhang, A. Legout, K.W. Ross, W. Dabbous, I Know Where You are and What You are Sharing:Exploiting P2P Communications to Invade Users’ Privacy (pdf), Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 2011, Berlin, 2011.
Phil Wolff builds realtime collaboration products for effective people. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
CORRECTION: Skype for Windows 5.7 Beta includes a Push-To-Talk feature. “We have introduced a Push to Talk feature in Skype. Many people who are playing multiplayer games have requested this from us. With this feature you can set a hotkey which will toggle microphone muting on Skype call. You can set the Push to Talk up on the hotkey’s selection under Tools > Options > Advanced > Hotkeys.” — 27 November 2011.
Push-to-Talk is a style of voice call control reminiscent of the way you use a WW II era walkie talkie; on a common channel, the channel is silent unless a participant presses and holds down a button, turning on a microphone. Releasing the button turns off the mic. This is attractive when you have many people in a channel and want to avoid distracting background noise and extraneous chatter. Police radio and taxi dispatch are examples from the real world.
Technically, you might also think of push-to-talk as a call where mute is the default. Try this: start a Skype conference call then have everyone mute themselves. Want to speak? Unmute. Then, when you’re done, mute yourself again.
So why is that Skype operation not what realtime gamers need?
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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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Skype’s stock changes hands. Sometime soon employees may get new badges. Payroll processing and PR firms may change. But, for the most part, Skype’s employees will stay the course, building more Skype in more places.
Skype division President Tony Bates must make good on his promise of synergy to Ballmer.
The first step is to build up the team that treats the rest of Microsoft as major account customers. Each division and many Microsoft product lines will get their own account manager.
They will be responsible for helping the Entertainment division, for example, bring Skype to Xbox Kinect. This is a “Skype inside” approach, building on Skype’s platform products.
Bundling Skype with Microsoft products is the low-hanging fruit. Preinstalled in Windows. An IE toolbar. A home presence on Windows Phone. One more element in Microsoft Office. Low integration cost, low product risk, massive distribution.
These two strategies will change the Skype Division and the Skype products more than the change in owners. Skype will be learning from users and customers indirectly, through the lens of Microsoft’s divisions. So Skype must hold on to end-customer relationships to keep understanding new users. Microsoft will pull Skype in even more directions, with multiple conflicting world views. Skype will learn to hold its own world view and mission. 
The coolest things will be the small leaks. Microsoft has great depth of process, experience with scale, reach in the workplace, research on the frontiers of computing. Those will spark deeper insights and innovation at Skype and those will be delightful to watch.
For those still working at Skype, congratulations on the new chapter in the Skype story.
A few useful links:
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7 years and 1 day since Skype Journal launched as a stand-alone blog.
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Phil Wolff designs and positions realtime collaboration products, finds useful pivots, sees both both forests and trees. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
Chart showing timeline of effect of North American Level 3/TimeWarnerCable Internet outage on 7 November 2011. 
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