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.
I’ve long been a fan of Rebecca MacKinnon, a reporter turned Internet civil society advocate. Society’s multi-decade conversation about privacy, censorship, and access are turning into a fight for control over the Internet. It’s a contest between government, corporate, and citizen power. Rebecca uses her TED talk to tell stories of this conflict among these three powers. And she challenges us: “how does the Internet evolve in a citizen-centric manner?” Rebecca’s coming book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom, discusses a need for technology changes and political innovation “so the Internet serves the world’s people, and not the other way around.” She describes the symptoms of this power imbalance in her talk, but I hope Concent is prescriptive. What’s the path to a future where both companies and governments are accountable to free citizens?
Will we see 29 million concurrent Skype users next week as the Lunar New Year continues and people Skype home when they can’t travel home? About 230 million people make the annual trip to their families but hundreds of millions more can only call. These Skype dial tone peaks usually happen on Mondays (in the Americas and EMEA) with the start of the workweek. That this one fell on a Wednesday (Thursday in Asia) signals a change in skyping behavior.
Or will the next peak come the week-after-next for Valentine’s Day, when romantic lovers call longer? Stay tuned.
A programmer who’d worked on the precursors to Skype’s code in the last millennium asked me where Skype’s spirit had gone. “I can still dig and see my code (we all put eggs in) but I have no hope that Skype will keep the faith. it has become the bane of what we were trying not to do. they married servers with p2p.” An hour later I’d Skyped this.
code is poetry
it’s also speech
skype’s code speaks to its founders’ values and the new owners’ goals
they have three goals in mind
liquidity events (personal wealth) meaning an ipo or buyout
world domination
avoiding failure
nothing there about making the world a better place
or leaving the internet better than you found it
they are going through the transition that villages go through when they become cities and then nations
Skype has been flexible on privacy when it comes to major markets. Skype’s China software, distributed through a TOM-Skype joint venture, censors text chats and enables government monitoring. Skype mobile for Verizon Wireless in the US is CALEA compliant, offering contact and call records and live intercepts to American law enforcement and intelligence agencies. India’s government wants similar powers, per an India Times report. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will give an ultimatum to RIM, Skype and Google to provide access to conversations within and across India’s borders. A Skype spokesperson told me today they haven’t received a message or directive from the DoT.
The speed of innovation is clearly accelerating. As we talk ‘cloud’ computing and mobile operators dig deep to find ways to increase ARPU and satellite communications makes its presence felt, it is important to see where it’s all heading. Societies win when innovation thrives and consumers have a choice.
Innovation means change. Disruptive innovation means major change. And change can be scary and even threatening for some. But it is the consumer who wins – innovation opens up richer, easier, more valuable options. And industries must adapt. Full Story »
SKYPE LAUDS U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT FOR PROTECTING INTERNET’S FREEDOM TO CONNECT PEOPLE ACROSS BORDERS
WASHINGTON, January 21, 2010 – Skype, the global internet communications company whose mission is to enable the world’s conversations, applauds Secretary Clinton, her senior adviser for innovation, Alec Ross, the State Department and the U.S. government for embracing and defending the principles of freedom of expression, privacy, and the freedom to connect to the Internet, as well as for their use of Web 2.0 tools for 21st century statesmanship.
“Conducting international relations by encouraging online interaction is an example of the Internet’s power to change the way governments and people around the world engage as part of one global community,” said Staci Pies, Skype’s Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs. “Secretary Clinton’s concerted effort to transform the State Department’s role from traditional ‘government-to-government diplomacy’ to ‘people-to-people diplomacy’ is a clear recognition that more and more people around the globe are turning to technologies like Skype to freely connect with one another across borders and to increasingly facilitate diplomacy, interaction and understanding.”
It seems State heard Rebecca MacKinnon’s guidance on how not to save the Internet by focusing on human rights to connect. How will these high minded aspirations become policy? Can we expect tariffs on goods from censoring countries? "This product made by people with a censored Internet" product labels?
Skype Journal is blocked by China’s government. Millions work around censorship and monitoring with networking tools like GTunnel. The GTunnel proxy on your PC connects to GTunnel servers. The client connects directly, through the TOR network, or through the Skype network. Connecting through Skype assures your packets are encrypted from beginning to end. This hides your IP address from servers. This also circumvents blockades of target servers like mine.
Caution for Chinese users: Skype cannot assure what you download from TOM-Skype does not include spyware. So download the international version from the Skype.com site or another independent source.
QQ now has more than a billion (1057MM) user accounts. Active accounts in the last two weeks of the quarter are just shy of half that at 484.9MM. Peak concurrent users rose to 75.5MM. Twice as many accounts and nearly four times as much dialtone as Skype.
QQ’s "Dialtone Density" (quarterly peak accounts online as a percent of the number of active accounts online) shows customers are spending more time connected with the QQ network.
Tencent explains their growth as "driven by the popularity of our SNS [Social Network Service] applications which enhanced user engagement and activity through cross-platform integration, as well as increased usage of our IM services through mobile devices."
Tencent has an adjacency strategy, adding businesses that complement their core QQ service and sharing common usernames.
So they have casual gaming, MMO games, FPS games, desktop games, enterprise IM, mobile, email, feedreader, security, media player, download manager, pinyin authoring, news and community portal, search, mobile games, mobile QQ, mobile music and ringtones, blogging, dating, facebooking, online fashion, live video, music sharing/streaming, ecommerce shopping and payment services. They all make money, either through premium services and virtual currency, or through a huge advertising network.
Tencent can deploy service after service because QQ runs on a massive centralized infrastructure. Skype will have to package core capabilities through APIs before they can speedily build new services and let partners build on the Skype network.
QQIM is expanding from its Chinese base with its 990 million user accounts and 448 million monthly active IM users. IMQQ.com is QQ’s new "global" portal for English speakers. At last report, China remains Skype’s largest market.
Tencent Holdings (SEHK 700) published their 2008 financials last week. Among the highlights: stats we can compare with Skype. QQ has more than twice as many registered accounts and more than three times Skype’s simultaneous online users. While QQ has many rich instant messaging features, it’s not a voice platform. QQ has grown about ten percent quarter over quarter in peak activity since the end of 2008-Q3 when we reported they had 45 million simultaneous online.
For the 16-day period ended 31 December 2008 (in millions), Tencent reported:
Registered IM user accounts (at end of period)
891.9
403
Active user accounts (at end of period)
376.6
NA
Peak simultaneous online user accounts (for the quarter)
49.7
15
Average daily user hours
710.9
NA
Average daily messages(1)
4,282.6
NA
(1) Average daily messages include messages exchanged between PCs only and exclude messages exchanged with mobile handsets.
How can QQ have more registered and active accounts than people who have Internet? China’s enormous cybersalon culture. Some estimates say China has as many as 300 thousand Internet cafés of 100 seats or more, about half unlicensed. So for each person with home or work Internet connection, another person drops by a local Internet café.
Online gamers have to give real names (China Daily), eroding the privacy that comes with anonymity and pseudonymity. How long until TOM-Skype is required to compel its users to give up their identities too?
Anonymous communication is a right. It allows political free speech. It protects people who blow the whistle on evil. It lets people call for help without retribution. It empowers people to explore their wild sides. Privately.
So anonymity in Skype is important. Skype users can be anonymous on Skype up to the point they spend money. Will Skype comply when China asks for your real name? Will Skype require TOM-Skype users to give real names too?
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.
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