Roland Tanglao shot this slide by Skype partner EQO at a recent Mobile Monday event in Vancouver. I love the strategy names: "Bandwidth Cheapskate" / "Opportunistic Connector" / "On-Demand Connector."

A fourth strategy, "Don't Make Me Think," lowers cognitive burden. Fewer steps; fewer things to look at, touch or consider; simpler results; elegance. Google used to lead over other search engines. Google Talk still leads this way in VoIM. But I'm betting the VoIM lead changes hands this year when a major player delivers a browser-only solution.

Skype was once EQO's only thing, letting you see/share Skype presence, join Skype chats, and take/make Skype voice calls. Now they also support AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, and GoogleTalk. On Blackberries, too. 

That sort of diversification happens when:

1. customer uptake from your only partner isn't high enough to make your goals (money, virality) or
2. you're afraid the partner may obsolete you with their own product.

Pretty sure EQO management perceives point (a) was true a year ago and (b) is true now. More than that, EQO's diversification capitalizes on everyone else's walled gardens: the Trillian effect let's users operate in multiple networks at a lower cost than running clients for all their networks. Effort and time are worth money; the EQOs, Trillians and ChatStats of the world save it.