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.
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.
Skype bought two mobile app companies last year: GroupMe for its group SMS service and Qik for its live mobile video streaming and sharing. GroupMe stripped out its voice conferencing as of 1 January 2012, they say for lack of use. Taking them at their word, why weren’t people using their voice chat?
Self-selection, where people who love group texting don’t want voice?
Was mode-shifting from group text to live or asynch voice too hard?
Was the audio quality sub-par, calling for a complete retooling?
Was the feature buried, never getting a fair chance?
Was it too hard to drag everyone else in your conversation from text into voice mode?
Did voice use-cases occur infrequently?
Was there another app that delivered group voice chat with more speed, quality, and convenience?
You might cure any of these problems with marketing or engineering.
Or is there some natural limit to how many features or kinds of features people will use in a handset app, one core-value-proposition-per-app? If so, Skype might keep its portfolio of Skype, Qik Video, GroupMe and SkypeWiFi apps.
Whatever the reason, paying more attention to fewer features should improve user experience. Someone at #ProductCamp once told me “product management is editing.”
It’s a graceful exit; no customers left hanging. More details on GroupMe’s sunsetting voice conferencing below the fold…
Full Story »
You know the line about men and women thinking about sex n times per day? My digital life is more on my mind than sex.
I left my phone in the car. My folks and I arrived in Fairhaven, a neighborhood of Bellingham, Washington, to shop for children’s toys and browse the Village Books store. iPhone in coat, coat locked in car, I went iPhoneless for two hours.
A half-block from the car I had my first phantom limb experiences. I saw an abandoned London red phone booth and reached for my phone to take picture. I settled for a camera but I wouldn’t be able to twitpic that photo or share it with my telephony buddies.
Over the next 120 minutes I wanted to:
- price compare books via Red Laser,
- endorse an oil and vinegar tasting boutique on Yelp!,
- check on expansion packs for Cataan (found something complex to level the playing field),
- photograph some beautiful chutney at lunch,
- look up Washington State’s counselor licensing (saw an office building full of therapists),
- log how far off-diet my meal sent me,
- check in from Village Books,
- look up that indie-book-seller coalition they belong to,
- read about their anti-Kindle campaign,
- download the Fire & Ice four-pack to my Kindle app,
- snapshot the cover of the last Gaiman book for friends in a science fiction Skype chat,
- ask Quora a question about the DIY book industry,
- remind myself to pack warmer next time,
- read more about Washington State investigations into Whatcom County budget magic,
- bookmark a book on business modeling for a friend,
- check the hourly weather for that evening, and
- peek at my sister’s family Amazon holiday wishlists.
That’s at least 18 reflexive reaches for my iPhone. 9 an hour, every 6 or 7 minutes. According to one recent study, this is more often than we think about sex. And this was just a casual family holiday stroll through a suburban shopping district.
Many of us are getting used to augmenting thought; in our ongoing internal dialog, conversations with others, shopping and working. Life is better with apps and live data. Heck, we think more complete thoughts, plan our future better, and interact with others in more informed ways with our digital life. Each time we reach, we’re getting mind candy, positive reinforcement. Our operant conditioning is strong.
So disconnecting causes withdrawal symptoms. How long offline does it take you to stop reaching for your laptop, tablet or mobile? For the conditioning to break down? Could observing a digital sabbath give us more freedom and control over our reflexes, more power to alter and adjust our behavior? Or should we not bother? Should we accept this new twitch response as an improvement?
This mind enhancement comes with strings and risks.
Does this new conditioning tie us to one company more than others, like mobile operating system publishers?
How can our new behavior shift power among corporations, governments, and individuals?
When you reach for your brain-augmentation-device, are you missing things because of that reach, causing new problems? Can the impulse to reach cause distracted driving, even without the gadget at hand?
At what point does personal dependence become a public necessity, like water, air, safety, and roads?
Can this behavior be exploited like sex? Sexy advertising bypasses our executive cognition and taps something more primal. Are printed www links and QR codes a first stab at triggering our digital reflex?
So here’s the test: Without hyperlinks in this post, how many times did you think to click on something? More times than you thought of sex? Aha!
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.
Full Story »
Skype for iPhone 3.0.1 security vulnerabilities will be fixed soon, says Skype. Tom Keating, Jim Courtney and Dan York write up the #XSS (cross-site scripting) exploit that could let a javascript copy your Skype contacts. first reported by Superever. The video. This follows another XSS vulnerability in Skype for Windows, now resolved.
Skype for Windows 5.5 update (5.5.0.117) adds support for Microsoft Windows 8. via Raul Liive. Skype for Windows 5.5.0.119 fixed a few bugs and updated the Click-to-Call feature for new browsers. Get it.
Or jump right to Skype for Windows 5.6 (5.6.0.105) to get a few improvements for new users, for screen sharing, and some UI tweaks, and now “in call advertising.” New, improved distractionware inside.
Skype for iPhone update (3.5.84) includes a new anti-shake technology for the back phone. Nice! The update fixes bugs. Safer! Both apps get Bluetooth support. Convenienter!
Skype for iPad and Skype for iPhone users see ads. “Advertising will be shown to users that do not have Skype Credit, a calling subscription or premium subscription.” #SkypeProtectionMoney. Christian Zibreg writes “As most people don’t use Skype Credit, we imagine rubbing their nose into the upgrade offering will be annoying, to say the least. Instead of up-selling us to a paid service, can we please get an elegant interface instead?” Tim Barribeau thinks “while there are some very useful new features in this version, there’s one big, stinking bad one: ads. … Advertising? Oh hell no.” Tom Keating isn’t worried about mobile ads.
Skype for Mac 5.4 Beta (version 5.4.0.1217) includes Facebook features. More feature parity with Skype for Windows means Mac users now see advertising. via Krishna Panicker. Get it.
Does advertising break Skype’s brand promises? SkypeSedator by eitarosan “automatically closes the Skype Home Popup Window and keeps itself in the Skype Process to continually check and close the popup, whenever it appears” in Skype for Windows. via Stadt-Bremerhaven.  Another stab at it is KillSkypeHome by Andrew Worcester. “This script is designed to start with windows, kill the Skype Home window when it finds it, then closes itself so it no longer uses any system resources. For those of you who don’t leave skype running all the time, I’ve added “Persistent mode” which keeps KSH running and watching for Skype Home to pop up.” Instructions for KillSkypeHome. Try at your own risk.
Irish Skypers will get targeted home page take overs (HPTOs), thanks to digital advertising agency AD2ONE.
Skype partner OnStar changed their ToS so they may sell your personal data. Would you still use a (still prototypical) Skype for OnStar if GM was selling your geodata?
Skype published new user activity stats from June 2011. 65 million people sign in to Skype daily. 700 million minutes daily in Skype-to-Skype calls. 30 million minutes of SkypeOut calls daily. 300 million minutes of Skype video calls daily. Ratios (rounded): 42% of Skype-to-Skype calls include video. 4.1% Freemium rate (minutes paid vs. minutes free). This is a snapshot. What are the year-to-year trends?
I celebrated Skype’s 8th birthday with some memories and predictions.
The deal with Canada’s TELUS to preload Skype on mobiles now encourages users to try Skype mobile apps, reports Jim Courtney. Thin clients not included.
Skype’s Qik will come with Japan’s NTT DOCOMO Android tablets. 10.3 million people use Qik.
Europe could have a decision about about Microsoft buying Skype by 7 October 2011. via Jim Courtney.
Microsoft’s instant messaging share could be 70% after buying Skype. Is this is a good reason for EU antitrust regulators to oppose the deal?
Skype’s real value is in the proven identity of its real users says Matt Asay.
DigiNotar hackers also breached Skype SSL certificates. No harm done at Skype, they say.
Skype’s Skype in the Classroom site won a Core77 Design Award. Deserved it! Congrats also to London designers Made By Many.
Skype Support Network (formerly Skype’s forums) added @skypesupport for Twitter users, for problems solved in 140 characters or less. Nicely active and responsive.
Users
Bill McKibben says work from home: Skype is greener than jet fuel. Airlines hope you disagree. 
Control a Skype robot with your brain.
David Gewirtz is building a home studio for Skype audio and video calls. via DIY-IT blog.
Marine watches his son born on Skype.
Man asks young teens for sex over Skype, goes to jail.
Woman steals laptop, accidentally skypes, and goes to jail.
Personal trainers make you do pushups over Skype. No jail.
Microsoft Phone’s “Metro” look is showing up in Windows 8. What would a Skype skinned for Metro look like?
Granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth prefers Skype and phone talks to facebook. via Emil Protalinkski.
Time zone challenges when Skyping for a casting interview between Australia and New York, Abbie Cornish and Madonna.
Fake General Patraeus uses Skype video to scam lonely hearts and patriotic souls. via Daily Mail.
 Phil Wolff consults with Hookflash, a software company building realtime communication products for effective people. Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
 People need more power over their data. If you think so, vote for my SXSW panel called “Let My Data Go! Open data portability standards.” I need your vote before Friday, September 2nd. This will let us bring this issue to an important audience.
“Another year and corporate silos still hold your data hostage? Our panel will review technical standards that restore personal control of personal data. Privacy is a happy side effect of personal data control and of new business practices, communication protocols, and IT technologies. We’ll highlight progress on all fronts and list the top reasons companies give for keeping their control over your data.”
I’m drafting a stealthy startup’s data portability policy; disclosure is a practical way to live up to these values. And even though I’m a director of the not-for-profit DataPortability Project, the exercise is still difficult. Tracking down the answers, having the abstract and detailed conversations across the company, making time for a policy document are distractions from readying for launch. The policy will get short shrift for a month or so.
Meanwhile, these engineers have been architecting some elements of user-centric data portability into their products from the ground up. I love that portability values will be part of this company’s DNA. What’s better is these founders and engineers are not the exception; personal control is now a central tenet in tech startup culture.
Our panel will recap exactly how organizations are delivering portability today. So vote for my panel right now! And spread the word: Let My Data Go!
UPDATE: Screenshots including one of my friends and text mentioning him have been altered to hide his identity.
Apple added Skype for iPad 1.0.1273 to the iPad’s App store last night. Skype soon tweeted they were not quite ready for the launch, tidying up web sites and such, but they are ready now. Here’s the YouTube announcement video. You can also pick up your copy using your iPad’s App Store app. This is Skype’s second iOS app, if you don’t include those from Qik. Mobile operators should love this; anything that drives up data plan charges replaces lost income from landlines and mobile voice minutes.
Let’s walk through the features, a long call, and talk about Skype’s editing of the design.
Full Story »
Product management has a natural tension between features and elegance, the richness of more and the simplicity of less. This is true for APIS as much as for user interfaces. Telecom technology is complex, a high learning curve for outsiders. In the last year I’ve seen Voxeo, TokBox, Skype and now Twilio expand their reach to web developers by simplifying the programming experience, hiding the details of making connections and streaming media.
Twilio announced this morning that its “Twilio Client” is just three lines of javascript.
<script src="http://static.twilio.com/libs/twiliojs/1.0/twilio.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
Twilio.Device.setup(token);
Twilio.Device.connect();
//you decide what happens next
</script>
With minor code variations you can build call center, conference call, intercom, softphone, audio recording apps, and text-to-speech apps in the browser. Promoting the launch, “five developers who write the most awesome Twilio Client apps in the next 2 weeks will win new Macbook Airs, tickets to the Twilio Conference, and Twilio Swag.” I’m loving the t-shirt. For those who use the Client, Twilio is cutting the cost of audio to a quarter penny per minute.
There are similar examples. A tiny Skype client powers Facebook’s first video calling app. Its API was also dramatically simplified, removing even usernames. TokBox embeds video calls and conferences with a few lines of javascript. Voxeo launched Phono last year, also a few lines of javascript to invoke their telecom APIs.
The gold standard for realtime communication: can you reduce your cloud service to a few lines in a language four million web programmers use every day? Can you simplify the object model, prune your parameters, and limit option so what is left is pure, elegant, beautiful and useful?
art credit: Twilio
 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.
I spoke with XConnect VP John Wilkinson this morning about their VIE product. VIE’s plumbing connects video calling services to each other. VIE (pronounced vee, the French way), the Video Interconnection Exchange.
VIE’s offers three interop services. Registry lookup, signaling, and transport.
VIE’s registry is a database of endpoints, each representing a video calling origination or destination device. A caller’s system asks the registry for information about the call destination. The registry holds identifiers like IP addresses and phone numbers, and maps the two to each other. It also holds profile data about what each end point supports. If your end point is a conference room telepresence system, what protocols does it it support? What codecs, streaming protocols, session setup, resolution, and bandwidth can it offer or require? The database is populated and updated by member networks from their own registries. A common registry is what makes VIE’s video interop work.
 VIE’s second service is signaling between end points. You might call from a SIP endpoint to an H.323 endpoint; VIE translates those different session protocols.
Transport is the third service. For networks that want the service, VIE will move and transcode a call’s video and voice data. Transcoding converts live streams from one format to another.
Most of XConnect’s customers are buying all three services. VIE is free for current members now but XConnect will eventually meter usage.
VIE’s near-term roadmap includes enriching the registry with more useful information and ways to search, adding user presence, blending in Unified Communication services, and multiparty video calls.
VIE’s first users are in advanced markets with high penetration of voice over broadband, like the Netherlands and South Korea. Norway’s Telio has hundreds of thousands of customers connecting outside its network through VIE.
As I see it, VIE offers an immensely useful service. Video technology is balkanized, as are video calling networks. Connections and calling are becoming more complex, not less, as more networks seek interop. VIE lets operators avoid worrying about interconnect, focus on their own operations, and store information in a specialist service.
Wilkinson says pioneering social and communication companies often focus on being better and different. They start off building organic growth in their closed network. Sooner or later they reach a tipping point where the value to their customers (and of their customers) of Fast+Best strategy gives way to the value of the network effect, reaching more of the right people. My sense is Microsoft will push Skype to that tipping point in the next twelve months, demanding integration across all of the MSFT properties and established namespaces. Whether that drives Skype into XConnect’s arms? We’ll see.
Photos of Skype’s Stockholm office in an old brewery by the architect. High Ikea, modest budget, open plan, balcony, brand-color accents, subtle we’re-in-the-audio-video-business iconography. 29,000 square feet (2700 square meters). Modern interior contrasted against classic exterior. Does the eye candy help people reach higher levels of personal productivity, social cohesion, and collective effectiveness? Does the layout support agile processes, virtual teaming, and wirearchic leadership? Will Skype’s codecs taste like hops or malt?via GigaOm, via Daily Icon.
 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.
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.
|
7 years and 2 days since Skype Journal launched as a stand-alone blog.
|
|
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.
Join the Skype 6.X Text Chat Room