Why Collaboration is strategic for Skype

The Volpi email says Skype must increase its reach, be in more places, connect with other networks. In other words, more.

That's an indefensible strategy. It won't survive attack.

Talk itself is a commodity with relatively low barriers to entry. Facebook, MySpace, SecondLife, and other communities add IM and voice calling as a feature for their millions of users. In other words, Skype can take those hills of commoditized ubiquity. It won't be able to keep them.

Skype needs to pioneer the next stage. A qualitatively different phase.

Collaboration.

Collaboration as a Service.

Collaboration as a Platform.

I’ve been blogging about collaboration since 1998. If the 1990s were about personal productivity, and the 2000s were about connecting the world, then this next decade will be about working together.

Until now...

I see two stages of Skype’s product innovation in its first six years.

Skype made VoIP easy and reliable. Then it poured the network into many operating systems, mobility and devices. Now everyone has more access to the Skype network. [Somewhere along the way Skype played with video, games, commerce, and public voice forums. Some failed; others, like video, are here to stay.]

These innovations gave Skype a large, growing user population. Sadly, its rate of growth is slowing.

Skype will commoditize minutes and Make Skype minutes more valuable

Skype’s next major stage of product innovation does two opposing things at the same time.

On the one hand, Skype is commoditizing its infrastructure. Skype has been opening up its network and telephony services to third-party distributors and developers. You can see this in Skype For SIP, Skype for Asterisk, and the web platform being built on Skype Lite. So while Skype sells minutes, third-parties innovate with vertical applications.

On the other hand, Skype will add value to its core talk service. Skype will pursue adjacent markets like voice, video, and web conferencing. Skype will compete by being cheaper and more convenient than the incumbents.

Competitors with their own network effects will add Skype-like features. So Skype must learn how to add value in the work context beyond cost savings. Skype will want to design and engineer services so Skype conversations become more fun, satisfying, productive, and effective than having those same conversations without Skype.

Collaboration Research will show how to make Skype minutes worth more

How? The way to make Skype minutes better than other minutes is to enhance Skype’s inherent support for collaboration. Multiple people getting things done together. These research areas will provide the insights, measurements, and experience Skype needs to make Skype the best brand for conversations that produce results.

If Skype’s first slogan was “It just works,” its next could be “You just work!”

Collaboration is a competitive edge

Many of Skype’s serious competitors fall into three categories. Low cost telephony and IM, VoIP and unified communications appliances, and conferencing services.

While they differ in modes, marketing, and value propositions, they all offer communications transport and some light directory service.

They don’t make you a better communicator. A better collaborator. A better teammate. A better leader.

Skype could.

Skype could advance the best collaboration practices and technology. And with Skype’s distribution (one billion accounts by 2013), could easily become the tool of choice for producing results, enjoying your job, and building economic security.

Not just more.

Better.

Together.

tags: skype, collaboration, volpi, strategy, research

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photo: swanksalot. CC BY-SA 2.0