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.
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
OPSWAT reported market share of installed Windows instant messenger apps for 2011Q2 (pdf). With Windows Live Messenger at 40.67% and Skype at 27.39%, that would put Microsoft’s post-acquisition share of the desktop side of the market north of 68%. Should this affect the EC’s merger approval? Does this market consolidation justify anti-trust restrictions?
The report is incomplete on a few fronts.
OPSWAT’s data source is specific to Windows desktops. So it leaves out web IM services like Google Talk, Mac clients like iChat, tablet apps like Skype for iPad and mobile IM clients like Skype for Android.
It also wouldn’t register the millions of Facebook chat browser extensions connecting to the Skype network, newly released since the report.
Microsoft’s other IM clients – MSN Messenger and Office Communicator – are not listed at all. Defunct or not reported?
The measurements appear to be biased toward Europe and the Americas since products like Tencent’s QQ, with roughly four times Skype’s active user base, are dramatically undercounted.
Ignore nuance: Just look at that huge block of red. Roughly two out of three IM clients will be Microsoft’s. What does that mean for consumers? To competitors?
Does the desktop IM market still matter? Yes.
Desktop IM has been Skype’s gateway drug for eight years. It was the most straightforward way to bring friends in to your contact list and download the codecs and other software needed for voice and video. Ringing, alerting and other attention-grabbers make realtime desktop apps successful.
That is changing. Standalone desktop IM apps will lose share over the next three years to browser, tablet and mobile apps. HTML5 and WebRTC are becoming real and platform makers are baking live calling into browsers and operating systems.
For now, desktops remain how most people IM most of the time. And Microsoft will soon own that market.
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?
The U.S. House of Representatives (the lower half of the United States Congress) approved the use of Skype and ooVoo today. Thousands of electeds and staff can now use video calling do the people’s business. The Committee on Administration opened its public Wi-Fi networks to these services after a year of debate and discussion and an intense bout of security testing in the last few weeks. The House’s secure local area networks and secure Wi-Fi networks remain off-limits.
A year is instructive. Organizations with more than 1000 employees typically adopt technology more slowly and deliberatively than small ones. They are more familiar with security and business risks and consequences, so they are cautious. They are responsible for fixing things and supporting users, so they have procedures and methods for managing IT lifecycles. In this government’s case, they must also be careful to follow laws and ethics guidelines for procurement. Stacy Pies and the rest of Skype’s government affairs team has been working with Members of congress, their staff, security and IT people for years.
My take away: technology consumerization and video calling’s intrinsic value brought Skype and ooVoo in the door. Skype GA’s ability to cultivate relationships over years, understand specific workplace subcultures, adapt to changing organization priorities, and to apply resources when needed helped internal champions close the deal.
Melanie Salvatierra posts a remembrance of Skype’s sponsorship of The Oprah Winfrey Show, airing its last episode today. Frankly, Skype might never have reached popular awareness in the United States without Oprah’s support. Will Oprah’s new cable channel producers use Skype without being paid? Even when using Skype gives Skype final cut per section 5.5 of its Broadcast Terms of Service?
Why would Skype request, last Thursday, to withdraw its pre-IPO filing of August 2010? Oh. Right. “The Company has determined not to pursue the sale of the securities covered by the Registration Statement. The Company confirms that the Registration Statement was not declared effective and no securities have been offered or sold pursuant to the Registration Statement.”
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in December 2010 that governments much have a search warrant to secretly seize and search emails stored by email services, ensuring protected privacy of personal communication and due process. I take it this requirement applies to Skype voice calls.
Does this precedent apply to conversation metadata like chat histories, call logs, contact lists, file transfers, IP addresses, and profile data? As Skype continues building cloud Skype platforms and gateways, more user data will live on Skype-controlled servers. Will Skype store that data encrypted, so thieves won’t be able to use it? Will Skype give up those encryption keys without court orders? Should you trust Skype with your personal and corporate conversation data?
This is a USA-centric post. Transnational services like Skype’s and Microsoft’s are only as secure as their weakest local leak. This is as true for country-by-country legal protection for your personal data as it is for physical and software protections. Where does Skype host data centers? What rules apply for surrendering user data to governments or to private parties in law suits? A thorough security appraisal would require Skype to disclose data center locations.
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.
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.”
EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn says “companies that stand up for users will do better in the long run if people are informed and can include this information in their decision-making about what services to use.”
This article appeared in abbreviated form on 28 February 2011 at Aaytch.com. Phil Wolff at Skype Journal teased me into writing a more complete account of my experience making the transition from a traditional Time Warner Cable landline to a Skype-supplied "landline." Some might be surprised at how easy and effective it is.
Background
Here in rural North Carolina, my family is a customer of Time Warner Cable. We might have chosen to purchase some of our services from the local phone company but we found TW to offer somewhat better quality and service. Through TW, we have plain cable service at about $30 per month, plain internet service (3MB down/.5MB up) for another $30 per month, and two phone lines at $30 each per month with unlimited calling in the United States and Canada. Our household is an extended family and we decided we needed a third line. So I called TW and they informed me their "modem" would only support two lines. I considered alternatives:
Vonage. It would have worked, but I was looking for something simple and significantly cheaper than Time Warner. Vonage isn’t.
MagicJack. Absurdly cheap; just $20 per year. I rejected this option for the simple reason that the phone service would cease to exist when I turn off the computer. It also appears now that the company, Magic Jack will not be able to sustain its low prices.
Line2 from Toktumi. It operates more or less as the Skype "home line" does in my description below. I did a trial of Line2 a few months ago and found it to be quite excellent. It’s cheap compared to other alternatives, and its feature set is in some ways more complete than Skype as you can see in this comparison chart or product video. However, in the end I turned it down because I didn’t need its extra features, and its pricing is about twice Skype’s.
Wait for future developments. There are new devices, technologies and services coming along all the time. I am aware of some of them, and they sound intriguing, but they are not here yet.
Skype. It is not immediately apparent that Skype can be set up for regular "phone" service. However, my wife and I each have iPhones, and I had come to appreciate the very high quality calling experience that Skype gave me with iSkype; actually better and more reliable than Skype on Macintosh (but that is another story). I had also noticed that over the past year, SkypeIn numbers, now called an "online number" by Skype, had become available in my local area whereas they had formerly been available only in Charlotte, the nearest city. Online numbers are not available at all in Canada. Finally, I observed that the combined cost of a SkypeIn number and a US+Canada calling plan was just $60 per year, versus $360 from Time Warner. For all these reasons, I decided to give Skype a try as my wife’s and my regular home landline, and not just for beta-testing purposes. This had to work flawlessly.
Setup with Skype
Step one: sign up for a new Skype account. That took about 30 seconds.
Then I gave that ID a $30 per year US+Canada calling plan and a local SkypeIn number. The online number would have cost $60 per year but there is a 50% discount when combined with a calling plan, so it was an additional $30. Total: $60 per year or $5 monthly.
These purchases took about five minutes, made pleasant by the knowledge that I would be saving more than $300 per year.
Skype Configuration
For incoming calls to our new home number, my goal was to forward them automatically and immediately to our cell phones, thereby allowing them to function as extensions. When someone wants to contact me or my wife individually they call our cell numbers. When they want to call our home they call our "home number." It rings on our iPhones and the first person to answer is the one connected. That’s no problem because we can always use iPhone’s three-way calling if needed.
Note that I do NOT use Skype for voicemail here but rather let the cell phone handle that.
Some people may be disappointed that Skype’s online numbers are not listed in the directory or "phone book;" an anachronism and invitation to spammers. We are happy to not have the feature. Now, when we post contact information to family and to friends we share, it’s the "home number" we give them.
Skype does not simultaneously ring on multiple lines, and I was a little concerned incoming calls would not be re-routed quickly enough. That proved to be a needless worry because Skype’s settings permit calls to be forwarded more or less instantly. Set the preference to forward after 1 second.
Note the forwarding numbers in the screenshot are my cell phone and my wife’s cell phone. Skype allows forwarding to up to three endpoints, or "extensions." It would be nice if Skype would allow more than three to accommodate a larger family. If I wanted to, I could forward to my regular Skype name to answer calls in Skype. However I decided not to because when I’m sitting at my desk, I don’t want multiple devices ringing at the same time; more chaos than I can tolerate.
Outbound Calling
Considering our use of the "home" Skype ID for outbound calling, let it first be said that the primary use of the Skype "home line" is receiving inbound calls. Because of the 50% discount on the SkypeIn number, the US+Canada calling plan is essentially free.
This is how to configure caller ID for outbound calling. The following screenshot is from Skype for Mac 5.x whose user interface is infamously and unbearably horrible. You actually go into the "messaging" preference panel and enter your cell phone number for SMS. Ironically, the design flaw is inherited from the Windows version; it made it into the "gold" release on both platforms. Oh well, at least it works.
When deciding whether to make calls with your regular cell line or the Skype "home" line, consider:
Cost. Depending on the time of day and whom we are calling, your cell carrier (AT&T Wireless in my situation) may or may not charge extra. Skype will never charge extra thanks to the flat rate Canada+US calling plan.
Quality. When at home or in range of a good Wi-Fi connection, a Skype call is ALWAYS going to be of higher quality than a cellular call. I have a slight hearing loss, so this is sometimes a crucial decision, especially if the person I am calling can be reached on Skype.
Emergency Calling. Until Skype has emergency 911 calling, it should not be your regular phone for outbound calling. However, the default mode on my cell phone is not Skype, and even when I am using Skype I have local emergency numbers in my Skype address book, like "911 – Police." It’s hard for me to imagine that the FCC is not going to force Skype into implementing 911 services soon.
Convenience. To be frank, it’s easier to call out with the cellular line than to boot up Skype, even if my iPhone is connected to a power source. This convenience factor restricts my outbound calling with Skype to only those calls that will otherwise be charged as "anytime" cellular minutes.
Summary
Having completed the setup of the Skype "home line" with far less hassle than it would have taken with Time Warner, I logged out of the new Skype ID. Call forwarding doesn’t work if you are logged in and I haven’t logged back in since. It has worked flawlessly now for months.
So there you have it. A home phone line with a local number and unlimited outbound calling that rings on multiple "extensions" both in your house and when you are on the road, all for a cost of $60 per year. Can’t beat it.
SJ. MagicJack operates a phone company to back their VoIP operations. Does netTALK?
Yes, our Network Operations center (datacenter) is located in Miami, Florida, with several POP locations in several states for redundancy and to guarantee uptime. We are interconnected with most major carriers and emergency services.
SJ. Skype tried a retail strategy a few years ago, with adapters, PC-free Skype desk phones, and Skype credit gift cards. Why do you think netTALK and MagicJack have had success in retail?
Skype users were early adopters of VOIP technology, when Skype introduced retail products consumers were in a transition of mobile communications, the economy was more stable and consumers were less concerned about the cost savings associated with Skype technology.
The unit of work engagement used to be the job for life, then a career with a few jobs. In 2020 much of the economy will work at the task and gig level.
Gig work brings free agent culture to offices, and they’ll be accommodate flexible and distance work.
Two-tiered workforce: a few core permanent employees overseeing a large cadre of contractors.
New organization structures: free agents form tribes, and tribes of tribes, to find and offer services.
This means we need tools for finding work at the gig level.
STL’s New Digital Economics event starts today in Palo Alto (down the street from Skype). Attendees wear ties. Today’s track is Telco 2.0 on open innovation. Tomorrow has two tracks: Digital Entertainment 2.0 about multiplatform services and digital lockers and Mobile Apps 2.0 (you too can beat Apple’s App store). Thursday looks promising: Personal Data 2.0, unconference format building on the output from the World Economic Forum’s ‘Rethinking Personal Data’ project.
$35 video calls for prisoners. Visit inmates in Charlotte County Jail, Florida, and pay heavily for the privilege. “The sheriff’s office will split profits with Montgomery Technology, an Alabama-based company.”
Speaking of outrageous price gouging, my local Verizon store rep won’t use the term “data caps.” When I expressed dismay at the monthly limits he tried an upsell to a slightly higher 3G data limit and its extortionate fees. When I was still unconvinced he said “you may be happier elsewhere.” Ars says it could be worse if you live outside the US.
My iSkype app takes a minute to load and log in and more than a minute to let me make a phone call until it loads contacts, call history and chats. Does that happen for you? Two minutes from launch to call is a bit much. Perhaps Viber or Truphone are my go-to mobile VoIP apps.
![Screen 2[3]](http://skypejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-23.jpg "Screen 2[3]")
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