Labor Day thoughts on the 2009 Skype sale

1. eBay's post-Whitman management gets credit for doing something right. Staffing the right executives in 2008. Letting the new leaders turn the startup into a company worth selling. Sending the right signals to potential buyers. Getting the deal done. Not rewarding the founders for their Joltid extortion. Nice way to turn things around!
2. Silverlake controls everything. With Silverlake Partners owning more than 50% of Skype Ltd., it's their call when to float Skype stock in the future or sell Skype to another company.
3. Skype will fund its own expansion. Don't expect cash infusions for acquisitions, infrastructure, labor intensive services, or advertising. Skype has been producing more than $10 million monthly in free cash. Skype's roadmap will chew up all of it just for internal growth and to create cash reserves.
4. Skype will keep its overall direction and product strategy. Skype doesn't need to rethink its business anytime soon.   
5. The SEC pipeline of data will be gone. eBay's 2009q3 10Q report (coming this October) may be the last detailed reporting of Skype operations and finances ever. Privately owned companies need not report performance unless they float stock.

Five product changes I expect from Skype in the next year.

1. Better P2P. Skype will first deploy a simple functional replacement of the Joltid P2P engine. They will improve it, building in six years' of real world experience Joltid never had. Skype should be able to make its P2P network more resistant to Internet outages and blocking, more resilient in the face of damage to the peer fabric, more efficient in finding and routing connections between users.
2. Better video. Perhaps their own video codecs. Higher resolution video as cameras and PCs catch up. Multiparty video calls. Better use of processors, including video digital signal processors. 
3. Skype Inside. A clearer platforming strategy, building on their experience with Skype Lite (clouds of Skype supporting thin, mobile Skype clients) and Skype For Asterisk (adding UI-free Skype clients to someone else's servers). Think "Communications as a Platform," where you can build Skype messaging, presence, and calling into mobile, desktop, and server applications.
4. ID anguish. Skype has an immature user identity model, left over from instant messaging services in the mid 1990s. We'll see greater conflict between Skype's two identity systems. Skype's consumer and corporate Skype names (user IDs) aren't interchangeable although their users and markets overlap.
5. A little less anti-social. Skype's great at talking with people you know. It does nothing to help me find interesting, entertaining, or useful strangers. Almost nothing (do birthdays count?) at helping me curate my friends and cultivate my relationships over time. Skype backed off from supporting its Skypecasts service (hosted calls with moderated Skype chat backchannels) and Skype public chats (web links to group text chats). Skype will research how to help people do more during a conversation (collaboration) and how to add more of the value found in other social media (discovery, ridiculously easy group formation, social gestures, non-conversational messaging).

tags: skype, silverlake

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

photo credit: underlying photo CC BY 2.0 by Casey Serin.

Ping.fm takes updates from Skype IM

Ping.fm is a synch service in the social stack, mostly in microblogging and rich presence. Set up on Ping.fm:

Enable posting with Skype

To enable posting through Skype, request to add the bot "pingdotfm" by searching for the username and add it as a contact. When the bot appears on your contacts list, send it an IM with your verification code.

The ping.fm page will show your verification code once you log in to the site.

Ping.fm posts results in multiple places.

Twitter. (microblogging)

Vox. (blogging)

LinkedIn. (professional network updates)

This is one of many ways to update your Ping.fm account so Ping.fm can update your many online lifestreams. Ping.fm's bots also talk with AIM, jabber (including Google Talk), Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.

Hat tip to the Pacific IT chat.

tags: skype, ping.fm, synch, synchronization, dataportability, microblogging, im, chat, twitter, linkedin, vox

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Vampire Identity: a Skype Red Software Design Challenge

Skype for Vampires offers the first Vampire-Ready Digital Identity System

Along with Skype for Vampires comes a new ID system, reflecting deep research into vampire market needs.

Multiple Pseudonyms, Persistent Identity. As you might imagine, vampires may wish to remain closeted. S4V now lets you define multiple aliases. You can apply aliases to individual contacts and contact groups. Your core digital identity should last as you shed aliases over the decades.

My Species. Each alias may have its own species indicators. You can choose from Human, Vampire, Dhampir, Werewolf, Pixie, Decline To State, BiteMe! We can only guess what  BiteMe! presence means.

Profile attribute: MyType™. Vampires can share their personal tastes using the common ABO blood group system (A, B, AB, O). Humans will be able to share their blood types in their profiles. You will be able to search the Skype directory for people according to MyType.

Real Vampire™. Is this contact really undead? Skype partnered with the American Vampire League to certify Skypers users as AVL members in good standing. Building on technologies like OpenID and OAuth, this is Skype's second use of third-party authentication after its MySpaceIM partnership. They are promoting VoID, the Vampires over Open ID protocol.

These features should also be useful to humans. We all want to share ourselves differently with different people, applying the appropriate social context. Your boss shouldn't know you hang out at vampire bars, your bloody friends shouldn't know you go to church, and your church committee shouldn't know how you voted. Skype now makes that possible.

See also:

• Your MySpaceIM account dies when you do. Skype Journal, 2007.
• WhoAmI - A Web2.0 Platform for Faceted Identity Management through Aggregation of Social Media. Stephan Baumann, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
• Faceted Id/entity: Managing representation in a digital world, danah boyd's thesis on contextualization of identity.

tags: skype, skypejournal, bloodtype, realvampire, mytype, myspecies, biteme, vampire, dhampir, werewolf, pixie, presence, aliases, facedtedidentity, identity, id, trublood, trueblood

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

BCP Management by Role: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Business Control Panel (BCP) Management by Role.

When a manager leaves the company and takes her Skype account with her, will the company lose access to its control panel? To its funds? To its records? To its control over control panel membership?

BCP "ownership" should belong to a defined role, an alias, perhaps even a shared alias.

A manager, their manager, the telecom manager, someone from HR and someone reporting to the front line manager could share that role.

Skype's current architecture prevents proper:

• Succession
• Delegation
• Supervision
• Audit 

Without management through roles, powered by aliases, Skype's BCP will create problems outside of very tiny, unusually stable organizations.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases 
• Multiple Companies per Account

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Multiple Business Control Panels Per Company: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Multiple Business Control Panels Per Company.

The power in Skype for Business lies in Skype's Business Control Panel (BCP). The BCP is where Skype gives you fund multiple Skype accounts and manage SkypeIn phone numbers for your organization.

Today, you are allowed only one BCP per company.

It's time to decentralize authority.

• Give authority to managers and team leaders closer to the people who use the service.
• Permit companies to create BCPs to match their formal organizational structure.
• Permit teams to create BCPs to match their informal organizational structure.

Benefits to Skype:

• More customer eyes on spending and activity.
• More awareness by first line managers of Skype and it's uses at work.

Benefits to Business:

• Allows sponsors to respect privacy expectations within a company by limiting the size of BCP membership and visibility of BCP activity data and billing details.
• Roll up aggregate statistics and financials across a company to better understand spending and activity by department.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases 
• Multiple Companies per Account

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Multiple Companies per Account: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Multiple Companies Per Account.

A Skype account is a person.

Let me be affiliated with more than one company.

I may have:

• a full time day job,
• bake cookies under my own name,
• help a friend's business on weekends,
• sit on the fundraising committee of my mosque,
• edit my professional association's newsletter, and
• support my kid's virtual lemonade stand.

No place in the real world does someone have just one enterprise affiliation.

We live in a buzzing swarm of many connections and groups.

When you ask people to choose just one, you shove them into the welcoming arms of competitors for every other relationship.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Share Aliases: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Sharing Aliases.

Nobody works 24 hours a day.

Companies still need to serve customers all day, every day.

They do this by sharing roles.

• On call neurosurgeon for a hospital.
• Help desk operator.
• Even the receptionist who takes a lunch break needs to hand off the role to another person.

The virtual equivalent:

• multiple people
• with their unique Skype accounts (account=person)
• able to share and use
• one or more common aliases (alias=role).

Let workers share roles and responsibilities through a Skype alias.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Provisioning: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Integrate and automate provisioning of Skype business control panel (BCP), Skype account, and Skype aliases.

So you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a quarter on per-seat-licenses for email, accounting, virtualization, commerce, manufacturing systems, tech support, operating systems, security systems, HR software, and the home-grown systems that make your business work.

Provisioning systems automate user account lifecycles across all those systems. You'll want to support lifecycles for:

• Skype accounts
• Skype aliases
• Skype control panels and company

Skype must integrate with the top provisioning products to make provisioning fast, cheap, reliable, thorough and automatic.

 

See also:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Alias Transfer: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Transferability of Aliases.

I wear many hats at work. A Skype account's aliases should hold all my hats.

I should be able to:

• define a role (the person who orders office supplies, for example),
• use it (call and IM suppliers, build a contact list of suppliers, accumulate a call/chat history), and
• hand it off to another person when I'm no longer in that role.

This preserves continuity of relationships so work is not interrupted when I change roles or change jobs.

Enterprises spend billions and mount great efforts to define workflows that survive an individual's path through the organization. Skype, even with aliases, will break proven and well-automated roles, relationships, and contact channels if Skype aliases cannot be transferred as needed.

Web domains can be transferred. Email accounts can be transferred.

Let me easily get and give my aliases to other Skype users. 

 

See also:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Aliases: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Aliases (Multiple Skype Names per Skype Account).

Multiple custom profiles per Skype user account.

I need one for my external customers, another for my team, another for external suppliers and partners. Also, my boss doesn't need to know I'm GorgonTheDestroyer in Warcraft, my clan doesn't need to know I collect taxes for HMRC.

Each alias should have its own profile, presence, permissions, history.

My account should give me a view of all of my aliases.

My account should come with two default aliases: @work, @life.

Let me log in once and present myself well in each context.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

SkypeSync supports Portable Contacts API

 

The SkypeSync desktop utility imports your contacts into Skype from other platforms. The new SkypeSync 1.8 adds sources supporting the Portable Contacts API. The standard is supported by Plaxo, so SkypeSync supports import of Plaxo contacts into Skype.

SkypeSync supports other sources too, including webmail address books from Google and Yahoo! using email standards and mobile phone contacts via the SyncML protocol. I described SkypeSync's mobile data portability last year,

Skype's own Contacts > Import Contacts... wizard in Skype for Windows 4 imports from Yahoo! web mail and Outlook desktop mail. SkypeSync steps in to fill gaps in Skype's coverage.

SkypeSync suffers from a few limits beyond its control.

• Searching the Skype p2p user directory is so slow it makes looking up Skype names difficult.
• Backward compatibility means I now have six "Alec Saunders" contacts instead of one with his five phone numbers. UPDATE: Skype limits max number of phone numbers per Skype contact to three.
• Skype does not permit programmers to search the Skype Find/Prime business directory.
• And there is no place for SkypeSync to store medata from other sources (address information, emails, employers) as notes about my contacts.

On my wishlist for future releases:

• Dozens of other sources.
• Offer intermediate steps before adding contacts.
• Push Skype contacts into Plaxo and other services. 

Step by step... 

Pick your source. Today you can choose from SyncML mobile phones, Outlook, GMail, Yahoo! mail address book, and Plaxo.

I chose Plaxo, where I have more than a thousand contacts pulled from my Google, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts.

Skype is picky about phone numbers: they need a "+" in front, in the US a "+1". 

So you've defined your source and set your numbering.

Now you can start your importing. Trial mode limits you to 15 names from any source.

And go...

Whoops. I need to give SkypeSync permission from my Skype client.

So, trying again, SkypeSync adds 15 contacts to Skype.

Results

I buy the software and, with a "full license", import all 3970 of my Plaxo contacts.

They are labeled "SkypeSync" so you can see who's been imported.

Most of my contacts don't have Skype names, just phone numbers: the green phone icon. Some of them have two phone numbers. SkypeSync creates two contact entries, one for each phone number. Inconvenient, but needed for compatibility with older versions of Skype. Skype for Windows 4.0 supports multiple phone numbers for each Skype name, but this hasn't always been the case.

Looking at the screenshot above, some people are offline. They have Skype names in their Plaxo profiles.

Sadly, SkypeSync automatically sent these people an invitation to connect in Skype. Should this be opt-in? Should SkypeSync offer you the chance to not-add a former girlfriend, someone suing you,

Strangely, Skype sent an email notifying the new invitees. This is new to me. 

License	Trialware
Cost	€12, pay with SkypeOut credit
Easy of Use
Does What It Says
Useful
Fun
Social
Certifications	Not Skype certified

tags: skype, 4, dataportability, skypesync, plaxo, software, import, importing, portable contacts, portablecontacts, utilities, extras

follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

NSFW: Skype, sex, and the sex industry

OK, all the sex stuff's a been a bit much. But I wanted to let you get a feel for yourself. 

We've never really covered Skype in the bedroom. So, in the run up to this weekend's Valentine's Day, I've been sharing first hand accounts from twitter and the blogosphere about Skype and sex.

I wanted to show the healthy, relationship-positive side to Skype and sex. So I went and found it.

In Skype Sex Will Turn Software Hard a college student explains how Skype video supports her long distance relationship with her boyfriend. And in The Dangers of Skype-Sex.. a true story a woman laughs about a hangnail injury during video sex with more casual lovers. Emiliey checks with two budding lovers did u have skype sex? because she heard a rumor.

When the phrase "phone sex" becomes "skype sex," you're hearing a cultural phenomenon go mainstream.

This is great for Skype.

Nearly every technology gets used for sex when it becomes

• cheap or free,
• reliable, and
• many people have access.

Skype is far past that tipping point.

What attracts lovers to Skype are the very things that make Skype attractive to a grandmother vidding her grandkids. Free, high audio quality, video quality at full screen, chat and presence for arranging calls, agile bandwidth management, privacy, and interruption management.

The bedroom is the last part of the home to get technology, and Skype is winning its way through that door.

Downsides.

• Skype Spam. I'm tired of sex spam in Skype chats, IM adverts for webcam sex sites. Beyond the rude interruptions of SPIM (messaging spam), they cheapen the world's perception of my favorite conversation channel.
• Skype Prime limits. Skype forbid selling "adult, sexual or pornographic" services through its Skype Prime terms of service.  Skype's own brand is cute and wholesome. Prime's beta protects that image and avoids criminal issues by keeping the service family friendly.
• Harassment. Women often "decline to state" their sex in Skype profiles. This sometimes prevents unwanted attention. Dina Mehta's landmark report, SkypeMe Eve, showed the dramatic difference between the number of stranger approaches received by men and women.

Opportunity.

I occasionally follow adult industry information technology. In many respects they lead the Internet by a year or two.

• They drove the inventions of payment systems for phone calls and for Internet commerce, long before Skype Prime, PayPal and Amazon.
• They drove innovation in video distribution and cheap video production back in the VHS days and later in the early webcam and pre-torrent download days.
• They pioneered bandwidth management and traffic analysis.

If you talk with young adult performers today, so many of them have sysadmin skills and talk about Ruby on Rails and CDNs and SEO and all the other geekery that boosts the right traffic, keep operations up, and keep site costs down.

Skype's technology doesn't offer the right connections for integration into today's commercial sex services. Skype would need to offer:

• Pseudonymity. Privacy is important in commercial sex services.
• Voice, video, and IM gateways. To pipe video between Skype users and the hosted media-stream management systems that route stored and live video.
• Payment system integration. So you can pay, confidentially but reliably, with Skype credits.

Talking dirty pays well, as you'd expect in an US$18 billion industry. I expect to see the Skype network interop with adult businesses as the technologies and markets mature. If landline and mobile phone companies, ISPs, web hosting and payment services do business with adult service providers, why not Skype?

People using Skype for sex among themselves affects the sex industry. It raises expectations for quality and personal engagement. It lowers expectations for cost and redefines speed and convenience of setting up a video call. Perhaps most important: Skype sex is market evidence that adult IT providers trust, spurring entrepreneurship in two-way video chat technology.

Summing up.

So people's love lives are joining the rest of their onlives. And Skype is just the latest utility to bring people closer together. Saint Valentine would be proud that Skype serves Cupid.

Have a lovely Valentine's Day weekend. Skype someone you love.

tags: skype, sex, love, valentinesday, usage, video

Talk with Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
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TOM-Skype Breach: A Promise

Skype made a promise to its users from the very start. Here's a page on their web site, No adware, spyware or malware, where they make that promise to this day.

No adware, spyware or malware

Skype is totally safe from these pesky blighters.

Skype protects and maintains your online security and peace of mind. This means that it will not display unwanted and intrusive advertising, or allow any malware or spyware to operate.

• No adware – no intrusive adverts.
• No spyware – nothing logs your online activity.
• No malware – no programs that could adversely affect your computer.

What is adware?

Adware is a type of software that makes money by automatically delivering unwanted advertisements usually as pop-ups. Normally it is very hard, if not impossible, to turn off the adware causing the problem.

Because you always have the ability to turn advertising messages off on the Skype software, we believe Skype is free of adware.

What is spyware?

Spyware is a type of software that automatically installs itself on your computer, usually without your knowledge, and covertly collects and transmits data about your computer use. For example, spyware may monitor a user’s behaviour and pass on details of a their online activity (for example, their usernames or passwords) to a third party for use in identity theft and fraud.

Skype does not allow any spyware to be included.

What is malware?

Malware (or malicious software) relates to software that is designed to infiltrate or damage a computer operating system or other programs. These are often described as computer viruses, worms, or Trojan horses. They sometimes come combined with other software and load in the background.

Skype never allows any other programs to be installed unless you are clearly informed of their presence.

As of 6 October 2008.

tags: skype, adware, spyware, malware, brand, marketing, behavior

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card

"quick poll for realtors; what would you put on your business card other than the required info? skype? twitter? website? blog? AIM? others?" -- Sasha Cannon Farmber

"@sashafarmer blog is a must. I also put skype on the card" - Matthew Rathbun

(wishing moo card still partnered with skype)

tags: skype, business card, calling card, identity

Follow Phil Wolff on Twitter or FriendFeed or on Skype.
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