While VoIP in general has driven down the cost of landline connections (whether at the end point or within the carrier infrastructure), the race is now on to reduce long distance mobile telephony costs. Carriers' voice service plans, especially when including roaming charges, have left an arbitrage gap in the market. .We are starting to see an avalanche of services to address this opportunity. What triggered this post was a press release from Pat Phelan's Cubic Telecom announcing a forthcoming service covering 160 countries involving voice and WiFi.

Cubic Telecom's chief executive officer, Pat Phelan, commented, "We want a world in which you can pick up your mobile phone anywhere and call anyone for as long as you like and not worry about the price. When most people think about driving down the cost of telephone calls, they think of calling from computer-to-computer. We don't. We deliver simple, high quality, high value telephone services direct to the devices that people like to use - their mobile phones. There's no software to download, nothing to configure, nothing new to learn. Our service is straightforward and our network caters to all.

So here we go again! To review:

Mobivox provides low cost long distance calling from any phone in over 40 countries provided you have free or low cost access to one of their points-of-presence. Biggest feature: you can make a call from any phone or mobile device, with either landline or wireless connectivity.. With their service you can also call Skype users and use your Skype account to help reduce your calling costs even further.

This week Truphone announced Truphone Out+, allowing you to make Truphone VoIP calls in "many" countries using your existing mobile number and a feature called carrier pre-select that determines if the number you are calling is a Truphone user. Works fine if you have WiFi or an unlimited 3G data plan. Plans are to have this service initially available in many countries outside the UK and US where current users already obtain a distinctive Truphone number.

James Tagg, Truphone's chief executive officer, said: "Truphone Out+ will encourage access to the Truphone service from countries where we have not yet introduced local number ranges. At a stroke we have massively increased the number of people who can access and benefit from the Truphone service."

Shape Services' IM+ for Skype and the iSkoot service both provide access to Skype IM while using the underlying wireless service to access a Skype gateway for voice calls.

One entry to the Skype Mashup competition, MyToGo offers the ability to turn your laptop-based Skype into a personal PBX to call, from any three phones you designate (mobile, home, office), your Skype contacts or any phone number via Skype or SkypeOut provided you have a SkypeIn number and SkypePro subscription. Works great provided you have flat rate or free access to your SkypeIn number.

Next week watch for a new Facebook application from iotum. Yes, it involves providing low cost calling via a mobile phone. And what, aside from "low cost", will Cubic Telecom offer that makes its service attractive?

Speaking today with Thomas Howe, one of his comments was: "What do people always have with them? Their phones." One common characteristic: these are all services that are not country specific and can be accessed across multiple continents. Can they contribute to reducing the carrier's role to being simply a communications pipe?

Seems like it's going to be an interesting fall to watch.as these services vie for our attention and usage. In the end the user will have choice based on:

• mobile phone platform
• wireless access availability and costs
• completeness of service (voice only, voice plus IM, email, etc.)
• ease of access (can I still make a call with the minimum number of steps?)
• effortless synchronization with contact lists (Outlook, Skype or other IM Contacts, Facebook friends, etc.)

Related posts:

• Skype for iPhone puts another pretty face on IM+
• Security, Skype and the Blackberry
• IM+ 2.5: Call Your (Skype and Blackberry) Contacts Your Way

Tags: Cubic Telecom, Skype, IM+ for Skype, Facebook, iotum, MyToGo, Thomas Howe, Mobivox, Truphone, Truphone Out+, iSkoot, Blackberry

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The application/nomination period for the first Skype Mashup Contest ended today. Winners will be announced 12 September. Your entrants, in alphabetical order:

Judging criteria

• Skypeness: What is Skype centric about it?

• Usability: Would we use this ourselves or could we see business/consumer users doing?

• Coolness: Does it make you go 'wow'?

• Usefulness: Does it make life simpler?

• Stability: Is it reliable and robust

• Flair or Weird: Is it different and new, does it make us scratch our heads? Does it look spectacular

Anothr: Skype-based RSS Reader

BitWine: Let’s you Search, Buy, and Sell services

Facebook Call Me on Skype: facebook-Skype presence mashup

JiWire: Hotspot Finder

MessageGroups: Find people to chat/talk to by topic

messagr.com: Find Skype users to talk to in this directory

MyToGo: Remote access to your Skype from a phone

PamBot: Pulls information from the web from a chat

PamFax: Send faxes from Skype

soZiety.com: Find people to practice languages

Smitter: Skype Mood Message to Twitter

suSkype: Social Network

Twitter for Skype: See twitter updates, and make them

Unype: Your Skype buddies on Google Earth (3D)

Sadly, judges (including Jim Courtney and myself) don't win free trips to Prague, Czech Republic, for the results. But the contest winner does.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype and IBM's Lotus Sametime offered persistent group chat for years. Microsoft is buying Parlano to add those features to its enterprise Unified Communications products.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A little context for my series about competing with Skype (so far 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108).

I love Skype-The-Product.

The company ain't bad either, changing the future of communication these last four years.

What could ruin this? Who is Skype hurting? How might they respond?

Skype and others are fighting this war on many fronts.

• "Unified communications" companies fighting for the enterprise as telephony.
• Office 2.0, but redefining workplace productivity.
• Mobile telephony, bringing Skype to purses and pockets, while incumbents defend walled gardens and coopt Wi-Fi.
• Commerce conversations, where talk augments bargaining and marketplaces.
• Embedding live talk in web advertising, as content, as sales, and as consumer communities.
• Adding live talk to online community, enriching relationships.
• Delivery through embedded devices and ubiquitous computing.
• Social [software | media | networks | search] connecting people in new ways.
• Portals embracing live experiences and blending them across their properties.

Wow. One front would be enough, but Skype reaches all of these spaces, and more. Focus (finding it, keeping it, adjusting it) and resource placement becomes harder and more important.

Back to the series...

How are rivals confronting each Skype challenge and opportunity? What tactics and tools are they using? How can these affect Skype? Skype's users? Skype's business and technology ecosystems? Skype's brand and reputation?

I want to explore these questions.

Then, having raised each threat, how can you prepare to defend Skype's business, technology, community? Can Skype lead in a more crowded and ever changing field? Can Skype build on first-mover advantages?

The fate of industries hangs on Skype's responses.

I sometimes think of Skype Journal as war correspondence (without the actual blood, violence, or bodily risk). We cover the grunts and generals, weapons and technologies, skirmishes and theater-wide campaigns, life in wartime, and how the conflict profoundly affects civilians. When we're lucky, we make sense and uncover meaning from the struggle. This series addresses tactics and strategy in this War for the Future of Conversation.  

So, thanks for your support. Pass the ammunition. And keep those war stories coming.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While at the Skype Developers Conference in early June, I learned about the first Blackberry application involving Skype; in particular, it followed the model I had been suggesting of using Skype itself for IM but, for a variety of both technical and cost reasons, using the underlying wireless voice plan for voice calls. In practice, IM+ for Skype incorporates Skype IM, SkypeOut, Skype and Skype Conferencing to provide such a capability for the Blackberry, Nokia Symbian 60 phones (certain N-series and E-series versions) and Palm devices. And they now have a web-based beta version that provides Skype access on Apple's new iPhone.

Last week I received an email from Shape Services Vice President of Marketing advising me that IM+ for Skype has received Skype Certification in a new Remote Access category. Congratulations to the Shape Services team on achieving this milestone; we look forward to other Skype Certified products in this category.

Other posts:

• Security, Skype and the Blackberry
• IM+ 2.5: Call Your (Skype and Blackberry Contacts Your Way!
• Skype on the Blackberry - A New Era in the AlwaysOn World
• Seat to Seat Calling via Skype on a Blackberry
• iSkoot Launches Beta Client and Service for Blackberry
• Dan York: Making Skype Calls from the Blackberry.....

Tags: IM+ for Skype, Shape Services, Skype, Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, Symbian 60, Dan York

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Four years' old today. Little fanfare beyond a note from co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennström.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Minor update, no huge features or bugfixes. Noteworthy only for not touching anything related to the outage. download and changelog.

Official release. Version: 3.5.0.229. Release date: August 29, 2007
File name: SkypeSetup.exe File size: 23 MB

• bugfix:

  • Skype crashed when ending a call and Do More menu is open at the same time
  • Send Money did not work
  • Skype crashed when call was finished during call transfer attempt
  • Skype crashes on Windows 98 when receiving video
  • Video call freeze with some rare webcam's
  • Skype crashed sometimes when not supported video capture device was used

• change: Updated language files

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Infiltrate Web Sites.
Occupy portal real estate.

Do you want to spread the word of your messaging or telephony product? Tap into the virality of online communities to promote downloads and trigger conversations?

Then you'll invent ways to blend your offering into their user experience.  

Skype works with portal partners around the world to show Skype presence for their members and to promote Skype downloads. For example, Bebo partnered with Skype in February 2006 with Skype Me buttons and a download page.

Now, 18 months later, Microsoft's Live teams use their centralized, server-side programming tools to great advantage. Bebo and Microsoft announced their partnership last week.

First, at parity with Skype, the Windows Live Messenger web services let portals publish simple user presence (online, offline, busy, etc.).

Exposing Windows Live Contacts raises the bar. Using the WLC API and Windows Live Data API, Bebo will be able to add features to their service. They might help you:

"Our agreement with Microsoft Windows Live delivers a powerful, new way to instantly update and keep in touch with friends and serves to make the Bebo user experience even more compelling and interactive."

-- Joanna Shields, President, International at Bebo, from a 21 August 2007 news release

• Search your WLC friends to see if they are on Bebo.
• Invite them to be your Bebo friends.
• Invite your Bebo friends to become Live friends. 
• Notify you of opportunities to keep your Bebo and WLM buddy lists sync'd. 
• See updates to their Windows Live profiles in a portal context.  

Messaging and telephony web services help portals enrich user experiences and integrate site

Neither Microsoft nor Skype offer web services to let you:

• synchronize your mood messages (writing once, publishing both in the client, on the web, and through the API).
• synchronize data in your profile (like your home page, home town, main phone number, bio photo, etc.), saving re-entry across systems. 
• launch from a selection of contacts on the portal into a multi-party conversations in text chat or voice/video conference call   
• blend public text chats and bulletin-board-style web forums

Skype has ten large online partners: Bebo, Chinagate, Jubii, LunarStorm, Onet, OpenBC, Pacnet, PC Home, Six Apart, TOM Online. How many of them are building out their Microsoft Live partnership as we speak?   

Once built, which presence service will be featured in each site's user experience? Which will be magnets for specific subcultures? Which social groups will switch to better serve their communication patterns, to capture their spirit?  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lots of activity out there involving the use of Skype and the VoIP market space.

Can using Skype via a rogue WiFi connection lead you into a life of crime? Where does the law draw the line? George Ou reports:

A man in London was arrested for using an open Wi-Fi network from someone’s unsecured broadband link from a nearby house. Similar arrests have happened in the US and this makes me wonder: Can owning a Wi-Fi Skype phone land you in jail?

Of course the best advice, from an access point owner's viewpoint, is to ensure you have changed those insecure default settings on your WiFi access point hardware. But the law in this instance does need to catch up with the times.

Need cash? While overseas? Maureen Martin, needing a rent deposit for her lease in Copenhagen, has A Fantastic Technology Day. Can Skype become a factor in Western Union's decline? (A more obvious candidate would be PayPal.)

50+ Mashables for Skype. Social networking news site Mashable.com puts out a Skype Toolbox listing over 50 enhancements involving Skype. Only one week left to enter the Skype Mashup competition.

An Inc 500 award in the VoIP market space: Fellow blogger Garrett Smith sent me an email yesterday mentioning that VoIP Supply has been named to Inc. Magazine's 26th annual Inc 500 list of fastest growing companies. Greg Galitzine at Business VoIP on TMCnet has put up this interview with VoIP Supply's CEO Ben Sayers. Indicative of the growth experienced:

GG: Please describe VoIP Supply’s growth over the past several years.

BS: Explosive and consistent has been the theme for the past few years. VoIP Supply experienced triple digit growth for the past four years and expects to see exponential growth throughout 2007. Triple digit growth at our current size would be fairly difficult without growth through acquisition.

The growth at this rate makes for a hectic business environment with many opportunities to succeed or fail. We experienced plenty of both, learned from them and landed with both feet on the ground. This is truly a testament to the hard work and dedication of the VoIP Supply staff.

Over the past year we have slowed the growth of headcount and focused on efficiency and automation. As a result, our revenues and customer base continue to grow while our expenses decline.

Congratulations to Ben, Garrett and the team at VoIP Supply; I have had the opportunity to visit Garrett and his colleagues a couple of times in the past year; their energy and enthusiasm combined with product knowledge and a good handle on Internet-based marketing all have contributed to this success. (Note the list has been expanded to the Inc 5000 but VoIP Supply is ranked at 389, putting them in the top 500, and 19th in the Telecommunications category, .)

Tags: Skype, WiFi legal, Skype WiFi phone, George Ou, Mashables.com, VoIP Supply, Beny Sayeers, Garrett Smith, Inc 500, , Maureen Martin

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Just to put a picture to my previous post, Phil has put onto Flickr some photos he took at the booth yesterday; click on the photo for the complete set.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Call Center introduced this week for Skype comes from a Skype Extras Partner, not from Skype itself!

Two posts this morning talk about a new offering exhibited at VoiceCon in San Francisco earlier this week. However, while one post eventually notes that this is a third party offering, another post blatantly assumes that Skype developed the service. (Full disclosure at this point: OnState Communications is a client for my professional services involving market research of the Live Chat market space where I have previous experience. Also note that this post has not been reviewed or cleared through OnState.)

Fact: At VoiceCon this week OnState Communications introduced and demonstrated their recently announced Live Chat feature that works within their overall OnState ACD for Skype offering. As stated in previous posts (here and here), OnState's ability to deliver their basic ACD ("Automated Call Distribution") service was inhibited until Skype's Call Transfer function became available in June. As a result they developed a Live Chat feature that can run independent of the Call Transfer requirement. With the availability of Call Transfer for the past two months, OnState is now able to offer both Call Center and Live Chat services or both; this is what was exhibited this week.

So Russell Shaw is correct in his title "New call center soluton unveiled for Skype". However, I would disagree with his statement: "You may not realize this, but Skype has vivid aspirations of being a major player in the call center game. Skype is doing this through Skype for Business." In practice, Skype looks to its Extras Partners to provide third party solutions such as a Call Center.

• Developing a Call Center requires unique experience, technology and expertise that Skype internally cannot hope to match, given the demands on its developer and product marketing resources just to build the basic Skype service across multiple platforms.
• At the Skype DevCon in Las Vegas a year ago June, I had a long discussion with David Clarke of Pika Technologies where he educated me on the requirements for a fully capable call center offering.
• Russell then does go on to acknowledge that OnState's offering is a third party solution; in fact, OnState is participating in the Skype Extras program.

Then Gokul Gopalakris, with reference to Russell's post, goes onto Smith on VoIP and puts out a post "Many Companies Don't Understand the Call Center Business". To put it mildly the statements in this post need to be addressed:

• The OnState team brings over 20 years of developing and providing Call Center services. They developed the GeoTel service that was acquired by Cisco Systems a few years ago. They now bring this experience to the Skype ecosystem.
• OnState uses the Skype client as only one component of the overall system. You can initiate contact with a Call Center agent from any website via Skype, Live Chat, or a Call Back process.
• The OnState cloud assigns the call to an appropriate agent, based on his/her skills and/or responsibilities. The Agent sees the overall picture in a separate web-based window generated by the OnState cloud; an example of this Agent Call Management screen is shown on the right and in Russell Shaw's post.
• This Call Management window is independent of the Agent's Skype client through which s/he operates chat sessions, voice conversations, call transfer to other agents and conferencing involving agents, their managers and the customer, as appropriate.
• The OnState cloud will generate a browser/operating system independent chat window on the calling customer's PC; this is the key feature that triggered OnState's press release. This feature allows OnState to address the very vibrant Live Chat market space for which Live Person is the current market leader.
• The Call Center market space and Live Chat market space are two separate market spaces that can both be addressed by OnState's ACD for Skype, thereby bringing a degree of convergence to what will evolve into a Real Time Customer Conversation space.
• They did hire some expertise to look into the Live Chat market space.

To summarize:

• Skype itself recognizes they have neither the resources nor the experience to address the Call Center market; this demonstrates a reason for their Extras Partner program.
• The offering announced is coming from a third party, namely, OnState Communications
• OnState brings a wealth of Call Center experience to the Skype ecosystem
• The Agent operates through both a Call Management window and a Skype client
• And I'm sure there will become some connectivity with CRM and other solutions. (Skype even contracted out the development of their Skype for Salesforce offering.)
• OnState brings Call Center functionality to small businesses that previously would have had to pay six figure numbers ($100K to $200K) for the basic PBX and Call Center software before even starting; With OnState there is no capital investment, IT management or other infrastructure required. A one person organization could start at $30 per month.

Tags: OnState Communications, OnState ACD for Skype, OnState, Russell Shaw, Gukol Gopalakris, Smith on VoIP, Skype, Skype Extras, Skype Partners, Skype for Salesforce.com,VoiceCon 2007, OnState Live Chat, Skype Call Center, , Live Chat

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Big coup for Microsoft's ability to reach into the mobile market. Demonstrates the advantage of being able to port your product code to the Symbian platform. Would have been nicer if Skype beat Microsoft to this market, but c'est la guerre.

Particulars:

• Includes:
• Windows Live Hotmail
• Windows Live Messenger
• Windows Live Contacts
• Windows Live Spaces
• Microsoft's PlayReady DRM
• Due: Spring 2008
• Trialware. No word on monthly fees. 

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The infrastructure that allows Skype-to-Skype calls to continue to be free.

Telecom industry veteran and VoIP pioneer Tom Evslin writes an excellent blog covering politics, life in Vermont, technology business issues and occasionally the communications industry. While the rest of us were beating the Skype outage issue to death, Tom was writing a very informative three part series of posts on "P2P - Boon, Boondoggle or Bandwidth Hog?" The trigger for Tom's posts was the BBC's decision to make most of its content available free over the Internet for a limited time after showing using P2P technology. He does reference Skype throughout the series.

I. Introduction: P2P Explanation for non-nerds, Advantages of P2P - Scalability, Survivability, Hardware Economics, Bandwidth Economics (posted August 15 before the outage):

... So the bandwidth needed for both the calls and the call setup is provided by the users. If eBay had to provide all this bandwidth, Skype-to-Skype calls probably wouldn’t be free.

II. The Dark Side: A discussion of the implications for ISP's on a P2P-based application that is "much cheaper FOR THE PROVIDER of the application in terms of hardware and bandwidth required".

It’s the FOR THE PROVIDER part that’s the rub. Let’s consider the case of BBC’s iPlayer service. For a seven days after most broadcasts, UK residents over 16 years old can download the show free and store it 30 days on their PCs for later viewing which can be offline. The current version doesn’t even download ads with the shows.

Sounds great, right? Just what TV should become on the Internet. Not so fast, according to British ISPs.

and, having been posted August 16, it includes a "Timely note: Ironically, as I write this, P2P network Skype is experiencing a rare outage". Read his post for the rest of this "note".

III. Is Metering the Answer? Triggered by a comment to the August 16th post from Aswath "suggesting that charging users explicitly for both upload and downloads pricing is “an equitable solution” to the congestion problem ISPs claim is caused when peer to peer (P2P) services use some of each user’s “unlimited” Internet capacity to serve other users..." Tom provides his counter arguments including metering's impact on usage and the high overhead of billing systems. And it is here that Tom's experience with Microsoft, AT&T and his own carrier-grade wholesaleVoIP startup come into play; Tom not only understands all the infrastructure cost issues but also the human dynamics involved associated with metered services.

Certainly provides some insight and appreciation as to why Skype-to-Skype calls can continue to be free.

Full disclosure: While at Quarterdeck I was responsible for a business relationship that involved incorporation of AT&T WorldNet's service into Quarterdeck's Internet software. I was meeting with his team the day AT&T announced "all-you-can-eat" flat rate monthly pricing and received a six figure number of enquiries that day alone.

Tags: P2P, Tom Evslin, BBC iPlayer, Skype, Aswath, P2P Infrastructure

Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At the Skype Developers Conference in June Lou Guercia told his story about how WebDialogs became a Skype Extras Partner with their Unyte Desktop Sharing service and how this partnership had benefited his business, along with the trial and tribulations of getting to the point where they were seeing some success.

Today WebDialogs passed a significant milestone; according to this report from Dan York, it was announced at VoiceCon 2007 this afternoon that WebDialogs is being acquired by IBM for incorporation into IBM's Lotus Software Group. From the IBM press release:

With the acquisition of WebDialogs, IBM is adding a software-as-a-service delivery model to the Lotus Sametime family of products, providing customers with choice and flexibility in how they buy and operate their web conferencing services. IBM will also integrate the service with its industry-leading collaboration portfolio, including IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus Sametime software.

The WebDialogs Unyte services will expand IBM's offerings in the Web conferencing space, particularly for the small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) segment and departments within larger organizations.

I have personally enjoyed watching as Lou, Gershon and the WebDialogs team build Unyte over the past 18 months into a first class desktop sharing service. Congratulations to them all.

Phil is attending the IBM press conference as I write this; he will probably have more observations later today; perhaps even information on how WebDialogs services will become incorporated into other voice-enabled services beyond Skype.

P.S.: It's another of Andy Abramson's clients who is being acquired; last month Google acquired his client Grand Central.

Tags: Skype, Unyte, WebDialogs

Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

FeedDemon has a Keyword Search feature that, using Technorati, finds for me all the blogs that mention Skype. Turns out that only a fraction of these blogs are in English; an indicator of the extent of Skype usage worldwide. Here is a sampling (with some being added to blogs I follow):

Mike McGrath, Dogpatch Dispatch: "Skype Says The Bug Has Been Squashed"

So what are the lessons?

First, make no assumptions about the problem unless you know the whole system. The definition of whole system now includes your application and everything else your users are plugged into. That’s an infinitely complex hairball.

Second, companies have a responsibility to keep their customers informed. Skype gets a C+ in this department given the lags in their explanations.

Third, everyone as a right to complain about anything. I don’t care if you paid for it, got it for free, or stole it. If it doesn’t do what it was designed to do you can bitch about it. Hell, as far as I’m concerned you can bitch about a clear blue sky. I may not agree, but I’ll stand by your right to say something.

And yes, I’m still using Skype!

Tony Hung, Deep Jive Interests: Skype Gives Back 7 Days for 2 Days Of Outage

However, the guys at Skype get a tip of the hat by doing something right in light of the outage. How it plans to address — if it ever does, perhaps behind the scenes — with business or institutions who may have lost real dollars to the outage, is another matter. And if anyone does happen to hear of that, I’d be happy to know what that is.

RogerB at MyVoIPProvider.com: Sick and Tired of Skype

No we are not sick and tired of Skype, just extremely tired of seeing thousands of articles flying around the internet in the past week trashing Skype in every conceivable manner.

.... We are by no means fans of Skype, but in the past 3 years we have been using them, besides other VoIP services, Skype was until last week the only service which was 100% reliable. We never experienced any problems whatsoever. Besides being 100% reliable it is extremely cheap and 220 million users cannot be lying.

Get a life!

Stuart Henshall in response to Brian Solis Crisis Communications 2.0 -- The Skype is Falling post that Phil references in a previous post:

... Transparency is key. Real faces are key. Voices are key. Most PR companies don't get social media. Skype's should; it was built and sold on the basis of social media and community support. It was built on stories; by engineers who keep adding features and business development that created API's and new product classes. It was built "urgently" and it peaked when sold to eBay. Make no mistake Skype is still a great company; the technology fantastic, and core stories still strong. However the Brand means less today. Mind control and rationality will be beaten by the heart of social media every time. When Skype really updates its home page to embrace community it may once again have the chance to move ahead.

Dan York over at Disruptive Telephony in a further post on the outage (Dan raised the question as to why this Microsoft Update was different):

Jim Courtney over at Skype Journal also offers his perspective on this statement. I join Jim in thanking Skype PR for recognizing that their initial responses were insufficient. I think a common thread in many responses to the initial communication was that we were looking for more transparency. Stuart Henshall, a very early Skype user and one of the founders of the Skype Journal, posted a good piece about communication and Skype: "Outing Skype Communications". Well worth a read.

With that, we can probably wrap up the outage coverage... it looks like Skype users are already back to using it.

:From Singapore, Kevn Lim of Theory.IsTheReason: What Skype's Outage Reminds Us Of:

Yup, we’re still vulnerable…
Just as we’ve discover how vulnerable the global Internet is (remember Taiwan’s earthquake disrupting Singapore’s connectivity?), here’s an instance of a Peer-to-Peer network falling apart when it theoretically shouldn’t.

If you’ve trouble visualizing this, a chat with Su Yuen makes it easy:
Su Yuen: Its like how in the Atlanta olympics…
Su Yuen: Everyone flushed the toilet simultaneously, causing the piping system to burst and leak
Kevin: That is an interesting analogy
Kevin: do you have the link source for that? URL?
Su Yuen: No, I heard it on the Sydney Olympic park tour
Su Yuen: The tour guide told us about it
Su Yuen: and that’s why he said for the Sydney Olympics, they had everyone flush simultaneously a few times to ensure the piping system would be able to manage it.

Shel Holz (a frequent visitor to Toronto who uses Skype for his podcasts); Smart Skype Move.

... Some have asserted that the two-day outage (the first of its kind since Skype launched) calls the service’s reliability into question. (For me, I wonder how reliable Ma Bell was three or so years after it was launched compared to Skype.)

Tamas Henning: Sharing Good ... Not Sharing Bad

Today after reading Villu’s post on the happenings (see here) I have to say almost all of my questions regarding this have been answered. It’s true that these questions should have been answered earlier but at least we aren’t completely kept in the dark about the incident. Better late than never? However I would like to end this blog post with a question especially those who criticized Skype for the outage: Do you know of a single operator (mobile, landline, VoIP, etc…) that didn’t have at least 1 (one) major outage during its life? If so which one?

Mark and Rose Taylor: Just Visiting This Planet: So Skype Was Down. Just read it.

Mark Evans, a heavy Skype user in his business activities, talks about the Freemium business model: What Do You Expect for Nothing?

Don’t get me wrong, having your service go down is a bad thing because if enough users get frustrated and decide to leave for a rival, it means advertisers could go away too. But the reality is this sense of entitlement among online users is unrealistic because expecting to get everything for nothing is just wrong.

Alan Stern responds; Andy Beal responds.

And from Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch: Leading From the Back.

Here's the net-net. Skype built their user base being ballsy, with bravado and brashness. Now that things have hit the fan the once very free tongued types seem to have their tongues all tied.

I call this leading from the back of the pack. And in the 2.0 era that's exactly where people will end up if they don't change their habits and style and be true leaders.

As I close this post at 1220 GMT Wednesday, 8,264,990 Skype users are online.

Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The following email arrived in my Inbox while I was out for supper this evening:

You may or may not know but last week Skype wasn't available for a couple of days. There were a number of reasons for this and I am delighted to say that the problem is now well and truly sorted and everything is back to normal. For those of you who tried to use Skype during that time but couldn't, we're very sorry. For those of you who didn't try to use Skype - well thankfully you were not affected but we want to reassure everyone that Skype is now working happily and the problem is fixed.

We know we have many faithful users out there who give us feedback (good and bad) on what we're doing as a company. The Skype community makes us what we are. Without you, our users, we simply wouldn't exist. We've helped people stay in touch with their friends and family over the past four years without any massive hitch and we want it to stay that way.

When the unexpected happens, it's important to remember the people who stuck behind us and whose loyalty humbled us. I want to thank everyone for their support, patience and being part of the Skype community. And for those of you who missed out on using Skype last week - I want to especially thank you as well.

As a goodwill gesture to all you faithful Skype Pro, Skype Unlimited, SkypeIn or Skype Voicemail customers, we're adding an additional seven days to your current subscription, free of charge. And even if you didn't miss out on using Skype last week - you can still have a week free on Skype, on the house!

So please enjoy it, call your loved ones, friends, family and colleagues and thanks again.

Talk soon,
The people at Skype

Tags: Skype, Skype Outage 2007, SkypeIn, Skype Pro, Skype Voice Mail

Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I ran into Brian Solis over the weekend and we talked, naturally, about the Skype outage. Brian is an active PR2.0 blogger, and he's been on a roll lately.

Brian coined Crisis Communications 2.0 for the new expectations and opportunities when responding to disasters. (His post was only triggered by the Skype outage; the ideas are all Brian's.) Brian writes:

Skype may have indeed benefited from Social Media and the incredibly powerful community tools available to companies today. But what’s most important though, is that the entire socially-focused process would most certainly have forced Skype to adopt a different, more human, tone, platform, and position for how it communicated with the people actively following the story.

All I’m trying to point out is that there are new tools and new “voices” required to instill confidence and support within the community. It doesn’t take away, that you still need to be smart and sincere about how you use them.

Let me invite you to join the conversation. Blog about it (tag "crisis+communications") or join the Crisis Communications 2.0 public chat. What assumptions in textbook crisis communication have changed? What are the new assumptions and best practices? What role do tools like Skype play?

What can we learn from Skype's response to this outage? What did their messages reveal about the company, its values, its identity and brand?

I asked if Skype was ready for its Bhopal moment in February. This was far from that bad: nobody was injured or died, wars were not instigated, children are not weeping in their mother's bloody arms. So this is far from that, but a great dress rehearsal.

Quoting myself...

A Google marketing executive woke up to really bad news in January 2007: terrorists used Google Earth to target a bomb, killing British soldiers. Evildoers using your service is a tough headline.

Some day Skypers will watch a YouTube video of a horrific crime committed using Skype.

• A kidnapper calls in a ransom.
• Conspirators coordinate attacks.
• An orphanage burns down because emergency dispatchers couldn't understand a Skype Out call.
• Terrorists force hostages to play backgammon.

eBay's been through this kind of thing. The next time someone tries to sell a body part or a nuclear trigger, you can watch eBay (1) look hard at the new facts then (2) respond quickly. Most of their challenges have been the kinds you'd expect. Some, like the December explosion on the eBay campus, you don't.

Is Skype ready for a strong defense told with humility, compassion, and conviction? Which talking points will best make Skype's case? Will Skype just defend their business (the "it's not our fault when customers cross the line"), or are they prepared to argue for the liberties of their hundreds of millions of Skypers? Should Skype embrace a rhetoric of free speech and privacy rights, and back it up with action?

We know any large population has some people who will do bad things. Same goes for Skype's growing network. I worry, just a little, that in the hurry to respond, Skype could miss an opportunity to define itself as more than a phone company. Skype can align itself with rich, culture-spanning values.

AIESEC is a student run organization that runs a college student work exchange program. But at its core is the belief that helping young business people live and work and make friends in another country changes them. And that those changes can prevent wars. I encourage you to find and support a local chapter near you, They have a mission above and beyond their operations. A cause.

I won't pretend to know or understand Skype's or eBay's beliefs beyond those driven by commerce. But Skype is becoming more important in the world. Millions of netizens the world over bring Skype into their daily lives. And Skype, a private network, is changing our idea of what it means to stay in touch with someone, to make friends, to make a call.

The more Skype touches us, changes our lives, the more Skype has duties:

• To discover what this means to our humanity
• To master the articulation of that meaning
• To advocate for the values reflected within.

Values endure. As we debate Skype's brand and rate structure, let's remember that "values" are more than money. They fuel our allegiances, our actions, our choices. They frame our personal identity. They define how we think about companies and products.

Somewhere in here is an agenda item or two; for whom? I don't know. And this plainly applies to companies other than Skype.

Have a great weekend.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever come to your Windows PC in the morning only to find something telling you that a critical Windows Update has occurred and your machine was rebooted. For a couple of years now, Microsoft has made available an automatic update process such that when they issue their update patches (usually the 2nd Tuesday of the month unless there is a very critical update required) millions of PC's need to be accessed and updated with no human intervention.

So Om asks why did the Skype outage only start Thursday morning when the Windows Update was released Tuesday. Here is my experience with the process:

1. Microsoft usually makes the patch available late in the day on Tuesday. And if you manually start a Windows Update you will get the patch.

2. However, Microsoft spreads out the automatic update process over a two to three day period, specifically due to the massive number of updates to be executed automatically and the consequent impact on both Microsoft's servers and their Internet traffic. In my own experience I will often find that one of my WinXP PC's has been updated by Wednesday morning while another (also WinXP) is updated Thursday morning. (And even my Win2000 PC automatically downloads the updates within two or three days of a release although I have to manually trigger the installation of the update.)

3. One can also expect that many PC users, having learned of an update Wednesday via the various media, probably also are triggering updates over the Wednesday/Thursday period.

Thus, it is quite reasonable to expect that the Windows Updates were occurring at a significant rate over Wednesday night/early Thursday when the Skype overload occurred. I first experienced the outage when I booted my PC at a country inn early Thursday morning (GMT-4).

Bottom line: That Perfect Storm can quite credibly be the combination of Windows Update reboots and the normal increase in Skype traffic usually seen between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. Eastern time when the Skype status bar online counter normally peaks.

As to Om's second question: "Will it happen again". Skype's answer (underlined in my previous post) is the next sentence after the one quoted by Om: "We’d like to reassure our users across the globe that we’ve done everything we need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again." Rogers, after a 24 hour outage of their Canadian GSM wireless service in July, 2000, issued a similar statement; it has always been there for the seven years since. Looking at Skype's history of stability and the fact we had one outage in four years, I think we at some point have to have faith in the ability of the Skype team to resolve the problem. So just use it!

We all survived the Northeast power blackouts of November 1964 and August 2003. My Rogers Internet service, which used to go down at least once a week when I first got it in 1999, has been there for me steadily for the past two years (it helps that they completed the digital cable TV upgrade by then). Did I mention that this morning my email POP server was down for several hours and, when I went to my fitness club this morning, the power was out. Maybe this is National Outage Week.

Tags: Skype, Skype outage 2007, Windows Update

Posted by Jim Courtney at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In an unattributed statement this morning (Eastern time), Skype has issued "The Microsoft connection clarified" in which Skype takes full responsibility for the disruption that occurred last week and explains what has been done to avoid a repeat.

We don't blame anyone but ourselves. The Microsoft Update patches were merely a catalyst -- a trigger -- for a series of events that led to the disruption of Skype, not the root cause of it. And Microsoft has been very helpful and supportive throughout.

Somehow a "Perfect Storm" combining a flood of reboot activity, described as the catalyst, with Thursday's Skype traffic patterns overloaded their peer-to-peer network resources and triggered a chain reaction that went critical (as a nuclear physicist would describe it). In the process of uncovering the problem, Skype's and Microsoft's developers went through the entire update process to ensure nothing had changed from the past. (Contrary to what legend would have us believe, when I was with Quarterdeck, our engineers worked long hours with Microsoft engineers in the summer of 1990 to make the then newly released Windows 3.1 work with the quasi-competitive DESQview multi-tasking environment in an effort that was critical at that time to Quarterdeck's ongoing ability to deliver both DESQview and QEMM.)

The Microsoft team was fantastic to work with, and after going through the potential causes, it appeared clearer than ever to us that our software's P2P network management algorithm was not tuned to take into account a combination of high load and supernode rebooting.

In response to Dan York's question: "Why were the mass restarts associated with the August 2007 Microsoft updates different from the mass restarts associated with any other month's Microsoft updates?" Skype responds "... there had not been such a combination of high usage load during supernode rebooting. As a result, P2P network resources were allocated efficiently and self-healing worked fast enough to overcome the challenge."

And should Skype users worry about future Microsoft updates patches and reboots?

The fix means that we’ve tuned Skype’s P2P core so that it can cope with simultaneous P2P network load and core size changes similar to those that occurred on August 16. We’d like to reassure our users across the globe that we’ve done everything we need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

First, appreciation should be issued to the Skype PR and development teams for recognizing that yesterday's statements left questions hanging and providing this clarification. And for explicitly accepting responsibility for the disruption. I would like to think it was the combination of many blog posts (my FeedDemon/Technorati Keyword search on Skype had a record number of entries yesterday), along with a couple of Skype Group Chats amongst Skype enthusiasts that Skype personnel monitor, that contributed to this clarification.

Some geeks out there will still not be satisfied because they don't get to look at Skype's source code; hey, it's not going to happen! Skype has responded to the general tone of yesterday's comments and feedback; at this point it's time to move on and figure out additional ways to take advantage of this low cost, highly robust and most widely used real time conversation service. Bottom line for Skype is to just keep providing a robust, versatile infrastructure for real time conversations.

As Phil points out Skype usage has returned to the peak levels seen last week prior to the outage; users are returning to worldwide low cost conversations. I left my GTalk open all day yesterday with its eight contacts; nobody tried to communicate with me via it. Yet at one point I was back to having a dozen chat windows open with conversations spanning the globe. I think this disruption proved one point; that, when you have over 200 million registered accounts and as many as 9 million users concurrently online, it is awfully difficult to find a replacement for such a range of services with such a breadth of usage.