Energy prices and the Skype Economy
World events are good for Skype.
Don't you expect petrol prices will continue to rise in the next decade? 
$5/gallon gas is just starting to force the public to rethink how energy touches every thing in the economy, 
every service, in each step of every value network. I can't wait to see what happens with $10/gallon gas. Carbon dioxide cap and trade will change the cost of things too.
We will adjust, of course. What we wear, eat, drink. Where we sleep, work, play. It's a huge change in lifestyle and culture for most. I bet it's affecting military strategy and tactics, boosting the costs of infrastructure, armament, logistics and supply lines. Managers in the private sector are checking their budgets, their supplies, seeing how the cost of energy changes factors of production, consumer behavior, best practices.
How did petrol rationing in World War II affect daily life? (see the "B" ration coupon above left and the flyer below right that asks "Is this trip really necessary?") 
What substitutes showed up for products that became too expensive?
I fully expect distributed families like mine (scattered over the US, Canada and Europe) to pay a big price in this. Ballooning air fares and abysmal car gas mileage will be the rule for another decade or two. So we'll make fewer trips, despite our very human need for connection.
The same applies to scattered workgroups, flattening further our open world labor markets.
Commuting and travel for job search will continue to be costly, driving (pardon the pun) people to seek work closer to home. Labor market friction will rise. It will be harder for people to find work, since there are fewer jobs closer to home. It will be harder/costlier for employers to recruit employees since they are drawing from a smaller labor pool, paying for relocation, or subsidizing commutes.
I think tools like Skype video conferencing will become more important as a result, as we put off moving our atoms and substitute virtual visits. So Skype is betting well by investing in video fidelity, intimacy, and engagement.
Where are the energy costs in Skype's infrastructure?
Sure Skype has data centers to operate, but most of the Skype network lives on the users' Internet and local networks, paid for by customers. This is in contrast to what most large IM and VoIP networks do, running all conversation through hosted, centralized systems. So Skype has an energy/bandwidth cost advantage of scale over Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL, and Tencent.
What energy costs will be passed on to Internet users by landline phone companies, cable companies, wireless companies, and local power utilities? Bandwidth and online storage are becoming more efficient, a la Moore's Law, but how much of your bandwidth is an electricity bill? And how much will that bill rise?Will those energy costs be shared 'democratically' or will some bear those costs more than others?
Skype could become a change agent in one other response to the higher cost of moving atoms: Location-aware software. 
I can cut 10 kilometers/month by better sequencing my errands, avoiding traffic congestion, and bundling activities/visits into each trip ("as long as I'm here..."). I fully expect more solutions to "the traveling salesman's problem (TSP)" to show up in mobile phones, car navigation, and desktop software. Since Skype, especially Skypephones and Mobile Skype, knows so much about who I talk to and what I do, it could improve TSP recommendations with my data and those of people in my social network.
I think a world where we drive and travel less yet need more face time in larger social networks is the perfect soil for growing a Skype economy.
P.S. Gas coupons were printed but not issued during the 1973 US oil crisis, like the one with the etching of George Washington at the beginning of this post.
P.P.S. Where's edge/p2p electricity production when you need it?
P.P.P.S. Are you going to Structure08 on Wednesday, 25 June? 10% discount with SKYPPW code.
P.P.P.P.S Umair’s questions via a vc, how do we:
Organize the world's hunger.
Organize the world’s energy.
Organize the world’s thirst.
Organize the world's health.
Organize the world's freedom.
Organize the world's finance.
Organize the world's education.
See also:
