Skype Blogs

Skype in the running in BusinessWeek's "Best of the Web" polling

2008-09-05T19:40:38Z

The upcoming election is big news in the USA. But there's no reason to wait until November to vote--albeit it in a different sort of election.

BusinessWeek has opened its online polls.

And Skype is in the running for the best "Online Tools" for Calling.

The competition is pretty stiff so get over to the BusinessWeek site
and click for your favourite.

You also can vote on the best new Web site, the most influential
person on the Web, information, fun and money sites.

As we say in Chicago: Vote early and often.

The polls close Sept. 12. BusinessWeek will publish the results on
Sept. 29 in the pub's acclaimed "2008 Best of the Web" edition.

Watching the Web - the Skype Laughter Chain

2008-09-01T11:15:37Z

Hi there. I'm Nick Wright and I work in online marketing here at Skype. You may have seen my recent posts on the affiliate blog. I'd like to just let you know a little more about how our laughter chain is doing out on the web.

In his recent anthropological introduction to YouTube, Professor Michael Wesch, chose to reflect on the curious position of the webcam for the modern internet user. In a paraphrase of Carl Sagan's poem after seeing the first "earth-rise" photo from the Voyager 1 spacecraft, Wesch referred to the webcam, sitting near our monitors, as:

"the little glass dot..That's there. That's somewhere else. That's everybody.

On the other side of that little glass dot is everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have ever heard of, everyone who is living out their lives that has access to the internet, billions of potential viewers, and your future self among them. Some have called it both the biggest and the smallest stage, the most public space in the world, from the privacy of our own homes. ... it is not just what you make of it ... it is what we make of it

...the little glass dot..the eyes of the world."

It's a strikingly poetic way to think of the internet video experience and a great way to think of the new vistas of possibility opened up by video calling. Above all, as it appeared a month into the release of the Skype Laughter Chain, I couldn't help drawing a comparison between the phenomenal response to our video and this view of the online video population.

Since the launch on July 1st, the video has been seen by almost 6 million people worldwide around the internet but what has really rocked our world is that almost 7,000 of you left a video response in our player. A big thank you to everyone who participated . Out of all those, we've added about 450 great laughs to our chain, which now comes in at around one hour and fifteen minutes. To give you a little taster, here's a short hilarious preview of the full chain:

Above everything, observing the response to the original video has been exceptionally gratifying and deeply heartening for everyone involved here at Skype and we certainly feel we've had a similar privileged insight into our own users and online video viewers, to the one that Professor Wesch described above.

We thought the least we could do would be to say thanks to all those that contributed to the chain by offering them Skype credit for 5 hours free calls to landlines and mobiles on Skype. So, if you find yourself appear in the chain (up until August 31st), please send an e-mail to hahaha@skypelaughterchain.com, including your name, Skype ID, the country you currently live in and 2 pictures of yourself so we can identify you in the chain. Please get back to us by September 30th to claim your voucher.

On five years of Skype

2008-08-31T11:33:34Z

From the supporters to the sceptics among you, we’ve been enjoying reading what people have been saying about Skype over the last week or so. As Skype turns five, many of you have taken the opportunity to speculate about the future, or to reiterate your criticisms and concerns – but to everyone out there who’s wished us a happy birthday, thank you

Dan York’s Disruptive Telephony blog has an incredibly comprehensive assessment of Skype – and I suggest you head over and read the full post yourself – but thought it was worth picking out some highlights:

For the first time, many people realized that VoIP could provide better audio quality than the PSTN. After you have used Skype for a while, you rapidly changed your perspective to where PSTN "toll quality", previously the high bar for voice telecommunications, would be viewed as low quality audio. To me this represented one of the most profound yet less visible shifts brought about by Skype.

Skype showed that you could have high-quality voice and have it fully encrypted end-to-end.

And on one of Skype’s (in my opinion) under-appreciated features:

The beauty of Skype group chats is that they are persistent and have a readily accessible history. With Skype, group chats can become an always-open-and-available place for discussion. The beautiful thing is that when you shutdown or disconnect from the network and then later reconnect, you automatically rejoin all the chats you were in, but more importantly, you automagically receive the history of what happened in the chat while you were away. This latter part is huge.

As well as a roundup of what’s happened in the world of Skype over the last year, Skype Journal is publishing a series on ‘What Skype Means To Me’ – again, it’s worth reading the whole set, but here are some of the best comments:

Skype is the communication application that is most likely to work. It is a star behind the types of firewalls that I encounter in schools and other semi-hostile environments on the road. Skype seems to be able to punch through and connect to the net where other chat apps are unable to. — Cyprien Lomas, University of British Columbia @

Finally, it used wideband audio! Skype connections were better than “toll quality.” Assuming adequate broadband, Skype audio beat anything else. I recall an early conversation with a friend in Tokyo. There was music playing in their apartment and it felt like I was in the room with them. — Brough Turner, NMS Communications @

The only stable force over the past dynamic years has been Skype. It keeps on humming in the background, while I subscribe to other social networks and related tools. And dump them again, of course. — Fons Tuinstra, China Herald @

So what Skype means to me? It means staying closer to my closest friends and family, it means saving cost while running my own consulting practice, it means getting things done and collaborating effectively. — Andrew Ng, internet technologist @

Neville Hobson, a long-time user of Skype for his podcast, For Immediate Release, says that he ‘can’t imagine there not being a service like Skype’:

Twice a week, with Shel in California (usually) and me here in the UK, we record our one-hour show over Skype. We’ve been doing that since January 2005 and we’ve now done 375 shows, plus a good 30 or more niche podcasts (interviews, reviews, etc). If Skype hadn’t been around when we started FIR, I very much doubt we would have started at all.

And on Twitter, Jonathan Jensen highlights the human benefits of Skype:

Skype's 5 years - Skype has brought people closer together by removing the psychological barrier of 'expensive' international calling.

Tom Keating and Rich Tehrani at TMCnet discuss the past and the future of Skype:

Skype has helped make VoIP a household name and has carried more VoIP minutes than any other VoIP software application out there. Well done Skype.

The immense potential Skype has is almost impossible to fathom – at any given point, millions of Skype users are online. As the company looks to the next five years I wonder if we will see a slew of new 2.0 type services or as Andy surmises, will we see less?

To wrap up, Robin Wauters at The Next Web also wonders what the future will bring for Skype, and Frederic Lardinois at ReadWriteWeb offers a similarly balanced overview. Finally, thanks go to Luca Conti for his birthday wishes, and in recognition of his impressively long contact list…

Happy Birthday from Howard Wolinsky

2008-08-29T13:44:27Z

For those of you who don't know me, I'm our US blogger, writing regularly about Skype news, views and the inside track on the company from a uniquely American angle.

Back in late 1995, I was new on the tech beat at the Chicago Sun-Times.

I asked to cover the Net because I was tired of the medical beat. My bosses knew I was an early Net adopter so they set me loose to cover the emerging tech. I cover the pre-boom Internet, the dot-com boom and the dot-bomb, and then on to Web 2 and beyond before I left the paper in January.

Voice on the Net was among the technologies that intrigued me back then and does to this day, both personally and as Skype's US blogger.

The problem back in those days was you couldn't easily connect with friends and family. It was a bit like ham radio.

I remember using some early tech and speaking with a guy who claimed to be on a hammock on a Hawaiian beach. Another guy claimed to be in Austria. So they said.
Then, new tech came along, with an interface resembling a cell phone, that enabled you to put your IP address in as a substitute for a phone number.

It was a step in the right direction. But it was hard to get those friends and family on the line unless they were nerds.

There were always problems with sound quality. Echo. Echo. We were still on dial-ups modems in those days.

The big breakthrough came with broadband service. And of course Skype arrived five years ago and changed the game.

Regular audio calling is a great leap forward with Skype, with hi-fi sound quality. You can use cordless Wi-Fi phones so you don't even need your computer on to make a call. And you can make Skype calls over a regular phone; so you don't have to use headsets (though personally I prefer them).

Plus, you can use SkypeOut to connect at reasonable rates with people on old-fashioned phones. Video Calling on Skype will expand horizons further as people become accustomed to seeing the people with whom they are speaking.

Skype, with its low rates, has expanded my world, enabling me to do interviews with sources around the world for international and domestic publications. If I had to pay standard phone rates, I wouldn't be able to afford to do some of the work I do, interviewing people in Europe, Africa, South America, Australia and Asia.

Skype, which on Aug. 29th is five years old, has changed my world--and I hope yours--for the better over the past five years.

The barriers of cost that once made global calling prohibitive are falling in the Skype world.
Thanks to Skype calling and IM, I am in touch with friends and family in Western and Eastern Europe, Australia and the Middle East. While in Peru earlier this summer, I helped new friends call their families back in the US; they were thrilled, grinning ear to ear.

As I rode on a bus to Stonehenge recently, I was chatting on a 3 Skypephone to a friend in Tucson. In London, I talked on the wireless phone to a friend back in Chicago. I hope this will spread around the world, along with other mobile technologies

More changes will be coming as the technology expands and improves.
Happy 5th Birthday, Skype. Many happy returns.

Five Years of Wow

2008-08-29T09:58:42Z

I'm staring at the blinking cursor on an empty page. This page. And it occurs to me that five years ago today, Skype was that cursor. An impatient speck on the world's radar screen, vying for attention that would help write a new chapter in the history of communication.

With the benefit of five years of hindsight, Skype's success now appears so logical, so natural. As if Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis and their skeleton crew of Estonian programmers had planned it all along.

Hmm. They simply couldn't have predicted where this journey would take them and millions of others - who, among them, have clocked up more than 100 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes. Visionary foresight is one thing. But expecting Skype to have touched close to 350 million users by year five, to have enabled billions of conversations, enriched and even enabled millions of relationships, and along the way to have helped transform one of the largest industries in the world? That would have been downright delusional.

So I can only imagine how the founders must have felt at the point of singularity. Before the Skype universe began. On August 29, 2003.

That universe is still expanding rapidly. And at age 5, we are still only at the very beginning of our journey. With our massive and passionate community of users, our 6 consecutive quarters of profitability, and over $500M annual revenue run-rate, we've got a super-charged platform from which to keep innovating, questioning the status quo, and fighting on behalf of people everywhere to set the world's communications free.

This is a responsibility which I, and all of us at Skype, take to heart. After all, we know history won't judge us on our early success, but on how we build this into a great and enduring legacy.

When I think of the future, I think of Skype as liquid communication. Instead of being condemned to a frozen shape like the telephone, it will flow into any device whenever you want and wherever you are. And, like water can turn into ice or steam, Skype can shift its form to match what you need at the moment: from voice to video to IM to SMS to filesharing.

Skype blurs the line between the real and the virtual. It bends space and cuts through time. Today, when a conversation wants to be had, technology is not the bottleneck. But technology isn't the goal either. There's no question in my mind about what stands at the heart of the communication revolution. So, as we celebrate the first five years of Skype, let's raise a toast to the human desire to connect.

And to the promise of the blinking cursor.

3 Skypephone S2: the blogosphere's verdict

2008-08-28T23:52:02Z

I posted a few early photos and videos of the 3 Skypephone S2 on the UK blog on Tuesday, but thought it was time to share some more of what we've seen around the blogosphere.

The combination of free calls and cheap high speed internet access (using the handset's HSDPA modem capabilities) seems to be a favourite among those who've tried the phone so far, and I've summarised a few of the latest reviews below.

Neil Bird at iGadget Life has posted a follow-up to his original photos of the 3 Skypephone S2, this time focusing on its HSDPA modem capabilities, and seems impressed:

I think its a great combination, of a great mobile phone, that allows you to make free Skype calls, plus you can plug it into you laptop and bam you can surf the web! Neat! You can even do this wirelessly via Bluetooth if that's your thing!

TechDigest seem reasonably happy with the phone on the whole

Now this is nice. 3 launched their new Skypephone yesterday, and wow - I'm impressed...

We use Skype a lot at Tech Digest, so it'll be useful for that, but I'll be using it mostly just as a wireless dongle. I can also use it as a secondary phone for emergencies. I'll be testing a review model out extensively first, and will let you know what battery life and HSDPA coverage is like across London. Look out for a video review soon.

Sister blog Shiny Shiny focuses on the free aspects of the phone:

There's so much free stuff on the latest incarnation of 3's Skype phone, it wouldn't surprise me if the next step was for them to pay you to use the phone. Obviously being a Skype phone you get free calls to other Skype users, but plug it into your computer and it becomes an HSDPA modem (as well as being able to store 4GB of data). Whilst not free, five quid for 10MB of data isn't anything to be sniffed at.

Episode 22 of the Mobile Industry Review Show features Dan Lane, Ben Smith and James Whatley talking about the 3 Skypephone S2 (skip to 2:19 for the start of this segment) They highlight the fact that it can be used as an HSDPA dongle out of the box as well as making free Skype to Skype calls.

Neville Hobson's also been 'messing about with phones', and gives us another sneak preview of the 3 Skypephone S2 before his full review, which will be coming soon.

Reviewing

Finally, Pocket Lint gave the phone a very balanced review, and admitting that any glitches in call quality were more than made up for by the fact that the calls in question hadn't cost them a penny:

Call quality was good on our tests, not perfect, but good enough and certainly in line with Skype call quality on the PC or Mac. It's one of those catch 22 moments: if I was paying for the call I would be at times disappointed, but I am not so I was happy to put up with the odd blip. After all, I've just phoned a mate in the US and Australia for nowt whilst in the pub.

Photo by nechbi

Some more on Skypecasts

2008-08-28T18:25:56Z

The decision to retire Skypecasts wasn’t an easy one to make, and I understand that many of our long-time Skypecast users will be upset. However, the reason for retiring them is this – we want to focus on making Skype software for Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile phones truly great, and so unfortunately we have to be strict about what we concentrate our efforts on.

Many of you have commented on the original announcement, and given the number of comments, I’m not going to be able to reply to each of you individually. A number of you said that you were worried that the move would reduce the opportunities to meet new people, as well as making it harder to keep in touch with friends, and so I’d like to respond specifically to some of those points:

One more thing, you claim you're doing this for the betterment of the Skype community. The ironic thing is that this is the Skype community. Without Skypecasts we're all alone and there simply is nothing holding us together in anything resembling a community. Please fix whatever it is that needs to be fixed, but don't kill something unique and incredible and amazing. — yostrovs

To take away such a medium is really sad ... some of the best people I know are in this community and this is how we have kept in touch and kept our friendships going .. through thick and thin and yes have met a face or two in person. — anni.spurlock

I know how fun Skypecasts could be, and meeting new people was always a big part of this. You might like to take a look at Skype’s Coffee Corner in the Skype Community, where you can find new people, discuss hobbies and interests, and learn about other cultures.

I'm also wondering if we can still have conference calls and such. — ska_sodajerk

Yes, absolutely. You can make conference calls with up to 25 participants using Skype, and if all 25 participants are on Skype, then the call is completely free, just like a Skypecast. There’s a guide on how to make conference calls on Skype for Windows, which might be helpful. (You can also make conference calls on Mac and Linux too)

Additionally, some of you welcomed the shift in focus away from Skypecasts:

This sounds like a good move! Hopefully now you'll concentrate on getting the Linux client up to scratch and making a native 64 bit version! — cowanh00

As always, our product teams are working hard Make sure you check out Ryan’s Skype for Linux blog for the latest news from his team.

Finally, I’d like to apologise for the short notice we’ve given you on this one – I know that it’s far from ideal for those of you who are regular Skypecast users, and I’m sorry we’ve let you down in that regard.

Goodnight Skypecasts

2008-08-26T23:10:16Z

At Skype, our aim is to offer products that delight people and enable the world's conversations. Part of our vision means coming up with new ways for our community of more than 338 million registered users to stay in touch.

Skypecasts is one of the many features that we've developed to enable these conversations. What we've learned by watching how the product is used and through user feedback is that Skypecasts is not quite measuring up to our high standards and expectations for connecting and delighting our users.

As a result, we have made the decision to retire Skypecasts from active service for the immediate future, effective 12 noon BST on Monday, 1st September 2008.

This decision is consistent with Skype's efforts to prioritise resources towards the products and areas of innovation that that will have the biggest impact on the Skype community.

Philosophically, we continue to believe in the concept of Skypecasts - group communication on a specific topic of interest. As such, we will look for ways to reintroduce this functionality in a way that lives up to both our and our community's high standards.

To those people who regularly enjoy hosting and taking part in Skypecasts, we apologise for the inconvenience and hope we'll be able to release a new and improved Skypecasts product in the not too distant future. We'll be sure to let you know when that day arrives.

An American in 3 Skypeland

2008-08-24T14:03:45Z

Peter Parkes is reporting on big news on the availability of the new 3 Skypephone in the Skype blog.

While in the United Kingdom recently, I not only got to meet with Peter, but also tried out the earlier version of the an earlier version of the 3 Skypephone.

Sadly, this phone is not available in the United States. But I got a look at what may be coming someday.

My Skype address book popped right up after I registered the phone. So I decided to give it a spin.

I called Chris, a friend back in Chicago, via Skype on the phone. The sound quality was great--plus the call was free.

I did run into a voice connection problem in a rural area outside the old Roman town of Bath.

Still, I was able to do a Skype chat with a friend in Tucson while on the tour bus outside Bath en route to Stonehenge. (Hope you enjoy my photos.)

I told my friend Ted that I couldn't get through on voice. I joked that the Roman cell reception was poor.

I told Ted the issue was there was no "roamin' (Roman) plan." (Nonetheless, Bath was a planned Roman city, roaming plans or not.)

Ted suggested that the Romans didn't have GSM, but were strictly analog.

I learned later that Ted wasn't far off. A manager in a 3 store in a shopping mall in Liverpool, not far from the Albert Dock, told me that in some areas voice didn't work because of antiquated infrastructure. He wasn't talking about aqueducts, either.

Still, the Skype chat with my man in Arizona worked great.

In the blog, Peter asks: "How does the S2 compare to the original 3 Skypephone?

"New user interface -- even easier to use than the original 3 Skypephone, with a carousel interface which makes switching apps speedy. It preserves the integrated Skype phonebook, so your contacts' Skype names appear alongside their landline or mobile phone numbers."

The S2 also can take photos and can browse the Web.

Maybe someday, we'll be able to use this phone, or something like it, in the USA. Meanwhile, while UK residents can enjoy the 3, we are still on the "II" in the Stone(henge) Age and can only dream of the III.

An American in 3 SKypeland

The 3 Skypephone S2 is here!

2008-08-19T09:36:55Z

Although it hasn't exactly been kept a secret, we're all very excited to announce that the new 3 Skypephone is here. It's called the S2, and as with the first 3 Skypephone, Skype is fully integrated, so you can make and calls and send instant messages to Skype users anywhere in the world absolutely free.

Equally, it's absolutely free for other people to call you or message you on Skype while you're using the 3 Skypephone S2. Of course, it does all of the other things you'd expect a mobile to do too - make calls, send text messages, take photos and browse the web.

How does the S2 compare to the the original 3 Skypephone?

New user interface — even easier to use than the original 3 Skypephone, with a carousel interface which makes switching apps speedy. It preserves the integrated Skype phonebook, so your contacts' Skype names appear alongside their landline or mobile phone numbers.

Better build, screen and camera — it has metal keys and back as well as a bigger screen (2.2" vs. 2") at higher resolution (240 x 320 vs. 176 x 220) and a better camera (3.2 megapixel vs. 2 megapixel).

HSDPA broadband and built-in dongle capabilities - it has built in modem drivers so you can use the cable that comes in the box to plug it into your laptop and get online.

Facebook and Last.fm apps and RSS reader - convenient access to Facebook and Last.fm, plus your top RSS feeds, while on the move.

Where can I get one?

It's available in the UK only at present, and it's available to buy now. It's priced at £69.99 on Pay as You Go, and it's free with a contract from £15 per month.

Unlimited calls to Finland and Israel now included in subscriptions

2008-08-07T15:00:23Z

When we launched our subscriptions back in April, we had always planned to increase the number of countries included. And today, we’re happy to announce the first two new members of our unlimited calling club: Finland and Israel (finishing 22nd and 9th respectively in the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest).

This is great news for existing subscribers, as Skype's subscriptions now offer even better value — and is very exciting for people who call Finland and Israel on a regular basis.

Unlimited World — €6.95–8.95/month ex. VAT

Unlimited World subscriptions now include calls to all landlines in Finland and Israel — if you’re on the Unlimited World subscription, you can now make unlimited calls to landlines in Finland and Israel for no extra charge.

Unlimited Europe — €3.95/month ex. VAT

Similarly, Unlimited Europe subscriptions also now include calls to landlines in Finland.

Unlimited Country — €2.95–3.95/month ex. VAT

Both Finland and Israel can now be picked as calling destinations for Unlimited Country subscriptions too, which offer unlimited calls to landlines in those countries specifically.

Prices vary depending on features available in your home country and the local currency used.

Also available in the Business Control Panel

If you use the Skype Business Control Panel (and if you don't, why not give it a try) you can now purchase subscriptions for your colleagues and employees. Scott's post over at the Skype for Business blog has all the details.

The not-so-small print

With all of these subscriptions, you pay a single flat fee, with no hidden costs or connection charges for calls included in the subscription. You can make calls whenever you want — at any time of the day, on any day of the week, and you can cancel the subscriptions at any time, too — we hate long contracts as much as you do

Of course, Skype continues to offer its Pay As You Go option. You can buy Skype Credit and call whoever you want, whenever you want, at very low rates.

Photos by proteusbcn.

Skype 4.0 Beta 1 hotfix

2008-07-30T14:55:42Z

Hi all,

A few weeks ago we updated the the 4.0 Beta 1 build with some necessary bug fixes. Today we're updating the build again with some more bug fixes, in particular to video calling, where some of you have reported problems when making calls to older versions of Skype.

There's no real functional change in these hotfixes, as we're still busy making a number of changes that address a lot of the feedback we've received and are aiming to launch those in Beta 2.

That's all for now.

Mike

Do the Skype dance

2008-07-29T10:22:08Z

OK, so first we had laughing, and now dancing: (thanks to Phil for the link)

There are quite a few Skype emoticons, and we're having a debate in the office about which would make the best videos. Take your pick

p.s. According to our friends at TameBay, there’s another video in the works — we’ll let you know just as soon as it’s ready.

Unarticulated needs and Skype 4.0

2008-07-16T12:58:23Z

Today, Skype's President Josh Silverman picks a lesson from Communist-era dissident communication that is equally relevant to companies that seek to become - or remain -- innovative. In fact, there's even an connection to the recently-introduced beta version of Skype 4.0 for Windows as well (which, for the traditionalists among us, will also have a compact mode).

When a Polish dissident read a letter from his East German friend, he didn't take those handwritten lines at face value. He knew that to make it past eagle-eyed officials, the letter had to appear innocuous. The how's-your-father-doing-oh-he's-fine kind. But using his finely-tuned antenna, he decoded and amplified the subtle hints judiciously sprinkled here and there. By drilling into the subtext and picking up on the unsaid, he used a skill we've largely forgotten in the West. He read between the lines.

Now think of your customer. He doesn't need to worry about a Stasi agent in the mailroom or a recorder in the vase. If you're lucky, he'll tell you exactly what he thinks of your product. Or you read it in a customer-feedback form. Or he blogs about how it could be improved. Which is fabulous. The only problem: you're scratching at the surface.

Customers are good at telling you about explicit, or articulated, problems. There may be call-quality issues. Or they can't figure out how to use Skype to send an SMS. It's not the customer's job to fix these things, obviously. That's our job. By tweaking the audio engine or improving usability, these problems can be solved.

But this is hardly genius. Yes, it can take embarrassingly long to even get the sub-genius thing right. But that's no excuse. Genius is realizing customers' unarticulated problems, needs and desires. Stuff that remains invisible to most of us, because we're too used to the way things are. But think of books, typewriters, mp3 players, umbrellas, teabags, and free calls; all of these disrupted one market or another. But I suspect it took people who didn't feel like tinkering at the edges. Who then proceeded to shatter the status quo.

Sometimes such innovation explosions happen (semi)accidentally – penicillin and vulcanized rubber come to mind. But you can't count on happy accidents. When I was at Evite, the fundamental innovation was not to make invitations look prettier, take them online and help people save on postage. We realized that people had a much deeper, albeit unarticulated, need. They wanted to know who else was going to a party before they committed to Friday night. No one expected or asked for this kind of functionality, but when they saw it, it was an absolute aha! moment.

Today, I work at Skype, a company that grew on top of an extraordinary innovation: free worldwide calls. And let me tell you, at this very moment, we have folks twiddling with their monocles, microscopes and X-ray machines to see the invisible ink. To figure out what the world is telling us. And we have folks who try to translate the message we think we've read into the next innovation. Often, it leads us nowhere. It's a tall order. But we'll doggedly keep at it. And when we think we're onto something, we'll invite you to play with the thing.

You may have noticed the mid-June launch of Skype 4.0 beta 1 for Windows. While creating this revamped version of Skype was partly a practical move – not unlike moving from a tiny student flat to a more spacious home – it also belies a significant effort to analyze Skype's evolving role in people's lives and to see the findings reflected in how it looks, behaves and interacts. As one user put it, these days, Skype is "more than just a chat program".

Before we began to sculpt the new face of Skype, we looked at the more obvious stuff that you told us. And then we dug deeper. We read between the lines. Drilled into the subtext of what you were saying – and doing. That's when the concept of integrated communications began to take shape. Previously, text chat, voice, video, file transfers etc. have been separate channels organized by time. The central idea behind 4.0 is to organize conversations by person, not by channel.

At first, it may feel counterintuitive. (Although I think intuition here probably isn't innate, but has been conditioned by the mechanics of the current channel architecture.) Millions of people depend on Skype, and have invested time in getting comfortable with how it used to work. So change naturally sparks resistance. But it's immensely satisfying to see initial skepticism wane after a few days with 4.0.

Is the current iteration of 4.0 a fait accompli? No, which is why we're looking at your reactions: gathering behavioral data and listening intently to what beta users are telling us. We even run a weekly Feedback War Room to keep things right – a first in our almost five-year history.

The next version of 4.0 will be much closer to its final form and best behavior. Don't worry, it will indeed include "compact mode", so you can reduce the real estate that Skype takes up on the screen. Among other things we're working on, instant messages will be more visible and alerts and notifications will be improved.

As you wait, think about your own interactions with friends, colleagues, ideas and objects. Go ahead. Look beyond the obvious and the articulated. It's worth the effort.

Skype's new COO Scott Durchslag speaks out

2008-07-07T21:32:19Z

Scott Durchslag joined Skype last week (June 30) as chief operating officer, reporting to President, Josh Silverman. I caught up with him Monday while he was in Luxembourg for a meeting of Skype's leadership.

I first met Scott a few years ago when he was an executive at Motorola, the mobile phone pioneer based in suburban Chicago, and I was a tech columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times.

He made a name at Moto, having led a turnaround of the company's South Asia business, where his team doubled revenues to $1billion. As Chief Strategy officer who architected the successful 2002 turnaround strategy, the RAZR phone was launched which became the best-selling mobile phone in history, helping double Moto's market share to 24 percent. Scott was also the force behind Motorola's shift away from proprietary software and toward consumer experience-based designs.

The self-described "consumer product guy" was involved in major deals with such partners as Kodak, Microsoft and Google.

The 42-year-old Chicago area native, who has an MBA from Harvard, left Motorola about a year ago, soon after the company lost Mobile Devices President Ron Garriques to Dell.

He laughed when I asked him whether war-torn Yugoslavia, where he was a freelance journalist, or Schaumburg (Motorola's headquarters) was more dangerous. He wisely kept his counsel.

He has been busy in the past year with some private equity deals and the birth of his second child.

He shared some thoughts about the Skype opportunity and where it's headed.

Howard Wolinsky: What message do you have for Skype customers or potential customers?

Scott Durchslag: For those who are currently customers, the message is: We are so thrilled that there are millions of people who love Skype and we want to thank each and every one of you and continue to delight you. For some of our customers who would like more help from Skype, we hear you and watch us respond. There are clearly some things we need to do to be more responsive to the customers who are having problems, in ways that they find helpful.

And to people who are not yet customers, the message is: "This is an incredibly easy, high-quality way to connect with friends and family. Just give it a try, and be amazed by the magic of video communications and the new features that make Skype 4.0 easier than ever to use."

We find that when people try it, just once, even as simple as a SkypeIn or SkypeOut call, jaws drop. You can just see the wonder in somebody's eyes.
There is a third group. People who tried Skype sometime in the past and aren't using it now. For them, I would say: "Give us another try. And see what you can do now and how far we have come. Because it's magic. It really is magic."

HW: Why did you decide to join Skype?

SD: Four things that got me incredibly excited.

The first thing is I got to just say the team at Skype is a remarkable and I'm not sure this extraordinary success story is fully understood. The way I looked at it, across different internet technologies, that I follow closely, it's been the fastest growing internet technology company of all time. I think that it is incredibly well-positioned given some changes that are happening in the world to be a major leader in the internet economy. For a four-year-old business, it has grown rapidly not only in terms of revenues, but it's quite profitable and nearly 1 billion minutes of calls have been made. And they have got this user base of 309 million people in almost every country around the world.

Moreover, it is intrinsically viral so that you can take advantage of new subscribers as they come in to be able to get them to connect to their friends and family. It helps the business have a growth trajectory that is truly unique.

An incredible amount of credit is due to the innovation behind the technology, the way they architected it with peer-to-peer to deliver the quality of the experience. Those were some of the core things that got me incredibly passionate about the product. I have been using Skype since the early days really.
When I was traveling with Motorola, this was my way of keeping in touch with my family. We could have a virtual dinner. It's something that made a difference in my life. All I needed was a connection to the internet, and I could stay connected to my family.

That's a very powerful thing.

The second thing is I look at the world today and you've got these incredible issues with rising gas prices, all this tremendous concern about global warming and carbon emissions. Skype is a green product. There is a paradigm shift that is happening. It used to be that if I couldn't go to a meeting in person and have to dial in for a conference call or video conference, you'd apologize for not being able to be there in person.

I think we are reaching a tipping point. Soon, you'll be apologizing for turning up in person. The numbers of pounds of carbon emissions that you personally generate by virtue of getting on a plane, to say nothing of the cost of the fuel to get you there, is making it such that these kinds of virtual connections mean that if there isn't a really, really good reason to be there, Skype is probably the right way for people to connect. To that extent, it's quite recession resistant. This a great way for people to take a dent out of their communications cost without having to make any kind of sacrifice on quality. The new video that we featured on the 4.0 Beta allows you do things that you cannot do any other way. It's rare that you can find a product that can both do well as a business and also do good in the world. I cannot imagine a better way to spend my waking hours every day.

This company has a real mission to make the world a better place. It applies at the individual level of connecting families and friends as well as businesses, as well as at the global level that we're talking about here in terms of the environment and family budgets and pocketbooks. That's a rare combination of things coming together at one time.

The third thing is, if I put my technology hat back on, is it's clear across mobile, and across fixed line, that there is a major paradigm shift happening in communications. It's all about software. It's not about the hardware anymore. Take it from me, it's very difficult for a hardware company to become a software company. Software owns the future in communications.

Software has always been at the heart of what makes Skype great since the very beginning. Skype delivers the communications applications better than anyone else. It totally leverages these trends in communications. And that's exciting. You want to be in a place where the core competencies of the company you are joining is where the markets are heading towards, not where it is running away from.

The fourth point is the economic version of the third point. If you look at Skype, it's telecom revenue potential has been hardly been tapped. Telecom as an industry is a $1.2 trillion industry. Over the last 40 years, it has consistently been just about 2 percent of global household income. The question is: Who is coming to capture that share of the wallet that is being spent around the world.

Because of the shift toward IP (Internet Protocol) on the landline side and because of the shift toward software on the mobile side, you can start to think about having a suite of Skype products available on different types of devices so that Skype is available everywhere consumers want to communicate to capture that share. From the desktop, to the laptop, to Mobile Internet Devices, to Mobile phones, Skype can be there for you, your family, your friends, your customers, your employees, and your partners.
Once your community of friends and family and business acquaintances are all on Skype, you've got that client telling you what everybody's presence is. The whole world is only one click away, and the fabric connecting us is made all the stronger.

HW: What would you tell the developer community?

SD: We want to be proactive to reach out to developers and we really want to be thoughtful as we look at taking Skype to the next level, about how do we create an innovative and successful ecosystem with those developers. If there is one thing I have learned about developers from my experience in mobile, it's that they are at the absolute cutting edge of what can be done. Some of things we never think of are invented by some young developer trying to create cool things for himself and his friends. You really want to be able to make it as easy as possible and as economically rewarding as possible for those folks to be innovating around your product. We'll be looking for new ways to be able to reach out to developers to unleash the power of that innovation.

HW: What is your message for Skype employees?

SD: I am excited at the opportunity to work with them. In the process of interviewing, I got to meet a lot of them. One of the most enduring impressions that was made on me was the unbelievable passion, energy and capability the employees have. It's one of the most precious assets of Skype.

You've got to give due credit to the innovation created by the founders and what they did in terms of building an amazing technology and due credit to the employees who got it out there and built this incredible user community of over 300 million people.
To me, the challenge is: How can I make an impact on them and on the business? How do we scale to keep this on this incredible growth trajectory and keep it a fun, innovative place to work?

You've got to know where you've come from and what's really great about it is to have that core strength. At that same time, you need to keep growing into a bigger and bigger business. In consumer technology, you either grow or you die.

HW: Where does Skype go next?

SD: Skype in terms of its size is in a real sweet spot with about $500 million a year in revenues. It's not so small that you are so constrained in resources that it's hard to matter or even get people to call you back. And it's not so big that you spend all of your time internally focused fighting battles. Skype is ideally well-positioned if we keep it focused on developing and delivering simple, rich, utterly compelling experiences.
We will succeed or fail based on the decisions that we make now in terms of the culture that we want to build, the way the we remain true to the Skype brand while becoming great marketers, and how we create a really agile, innovative organization that can stay at this leading edge of where consumer technology really touches peoples lives. We need to build processes to scale and be able to respond to this massive number of consumers and business users. Those are the kinds of things that will kind of make or break the next level of success. It is both ours to win and ours to lose if we let ourselves get distracted.

You can get only so far from just pure product innovation. We need to take innovation into the organization. We need to take innovation into marketing. We need to take innovation into the channels. We need to take innovation into the platform and how we work with developers and build an ecosystem.

These are all major factors in figuring out how do we connect the next couple billion people in the world who have never had an experience with Skype. At the end of the day, that's a mission that's worth getting up in the morning to go do.