Skype Journal’s Phil Wolff has published a series of conversations with the Telecommunications Association of Michigan — a preview of his trip there this week. They’re well worth a read:
In Part 1, Don’t Ignore the Shift, Phil talks about the scale of Skype adoption.Â
In Parts 2 and 3, Your Applecart versus the Supermarket, Phil begins to explain that shift and the implication. For instance, he talks about the coming integration fo eBay and Skype, and how Skype is defining the communications products of the future today.Â
Skypers are having their “communications of the future” moments now. If you’re thinking about selling video conversation someday at a premium, it’s too late. The market’s already commoditized and more useful. And it’s happened without fast lanes, using the dumb IP network. Â
With:
- free calls
- free conferencing
- free video calls
- free video conferencing
- integrated with instant messaging
- file and folder sharing
All at the same time, in the same call.
In Part 4, Skype Helps Relationships More Than You Do, Phil makes the observation that these are social applications. He points out that the phone was a social application too, but it has now been eclipsed by twenty-first century social applications.Â
Worth a read, especially if you’re an incumbent telco.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
