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Content Tagged with Profiles + skype

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<p>After 6 months of not-quite-official availability <a href=”http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/04/15/fring-comes-to-the-iphone/“>for those of us with jailbroken iPhones</a>,<a href=”http://www.fring.com/“> Fring</a>, a free mobile Voice-over-IP service (VoIP), has made its way to the App Store. With that, a day that some said would never come has arrived: Skype calls can now be made on the iPhone, no hacks required.</p>
<p>Beyond the Skype functionality (which I imagine would be its most popular use), Fring also lets you chat with (and call, where appropriate) friends over MSN, GoogleTalk, AIM, Yahoo, Twitter, ICQ, and of course, Fring’s own service. </p>
<p><!–more–></p>
<p>Back at the iPhone SDK event March, Steve Jobs stated that there would be no blockade on VoIP applications be it that calls could only be made over WiFi. Other VoIP applications, such as Truphone, made their way out within a few weeks of the SDK’s availability - unfortunately, they only offered support for their own services. With a huge chunk of VoIP users (and, in turn, the other VoIP users they’d be calling) already dedicated to one of the popular PC based services, this wasn’t an optimal solution.</p>
<p>Even with these other VoIP applications available, naysayers feared Skype would never be allowed. If Apple didn’t have some reason block it, AT&T would — or so groupthink might have lead us to believe. With this release, the debate is over - so go grab <a href=”http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=290948830&mt=8“>Fring from the App Store.</a></p>
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Skype is getting a major, much-needed upgrade: Skype 4.0. President Josh Silverman calls it the “biggest new release in Skype’s history.” The new software client, which which will be released here in beta tomorrow (for Windows only), takes up the whole screen. Video is front and center.

“Our old UI was purpose-built for voice ,” Silverman tells me. (I put an excerpt from my interview with him up on TalkCrunch, or you can listen to the audio file directly). Now by going full-screen, the functionality can be spread out and made much simpler. It also makes it a better video-chat client. There is a big green “video call” button now. There is picture-in-picture functionality, and you can move the thumbnail around that shows your video.

The peer-to-peer technology ensures good quality video, and there is more space available for text chatting or sending files while the conversation is going. When you do a video chat, it really has the feeling of being in a video chat room. You can also pull in videos from Metacafe and DailyMotion (but not from YouTube). While Skype can handle up to 25 participants on the same call with voice, it is limited to one-to-one video chats at this point. Although, those can be combined with multi-party voice and text chats where everyone else just hears the audio. In comparison, Paltalk can do thousands of simultaneous video chats in a similar room-like environment.

The other major change in Skype 4.0 is that the entire experience is now centered around conversations and managing those conversations, whether those are with groups or individuals. Skype 4.0 lets you import contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. (No Gmail, another snub to Google).

There are also other improvements, such as automatic detection when you plug in a new headset or if your laptop lacks a built-in microphone. It also has software tools for testing your audio and video quality. All in all, Skype 4.0 is a step forward.

Skype, which is owned by eBay, boasts 309 million registered users and had $126 million in revenues in the first quarter.

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When early adopters sit at their computers, what applications and websites do they use the most? The answer: Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, and MSN Messenger—just like most everyone else. At least according to data from RescueTime, the productivity app that monitors the amount of time a user spends on every application on his desktop. The Y Combinator-funded startup has given us an exclusive look at the usage data they’ve compiled from over 30,000 users (most of whom are early adopters). This data represents real-life usage on a huge scale, totaling 475,190 man-hours.

Gmail, Facebook, and Skype make strong showings, but still lag behind Microsoft’s desktop apps. Microsoft Websites, however, are nowhere to be seen. All of this suggests that among early adopters, desktop apps still rule, but Webtop apps are gaining ground in terms of what they use every day. After Outlook and Word, Gmail is the third most-used application, Facebook is No. 6, Google search is No. 10, iTunes is No. 11, and Skype is No. 16.

If you add up all of Google’s apps and sites, they take up 17 percent of the time this group spends on their computers. But Microsoft’s apps collectively take up 41 percent of their time, so Google still has some catching up to do.

Here’s the disclaimer: This data is by no means scientific. It represents mostly early adopters, but these are the people who are supposed to figure out what’s useful before the rest of us do. They are the canary in the coal mine. The data also has an international slant, with only 40% of users in the US (a total of 60% are English-speaking). About 35% of the users are on Macs, a rate over three times higher than the international estimate of 10% Mac market-share.

Here’s a breakdown of the top 20 applications and Websites, ranked by the overall time spent in each.

The Top 3

The top of the list is dull. Outlook stands tall with 12.4% of all the time spent on a computer, with MS Word(9.4%) and Gmail(6.6%) rounding out the top three. No surprises here.

Chat

In the battle for chat-client supremacy, MSN Messenger comes away with a whopping 4.14%, more than twice as much as the next leading client. Adium’s high performance is indicative of the high proportion of Mac users (it is easily the best client on the Mac).

Websites

Facebook holds a surprisingly strong lead over other websites, with nearly three times as much usage as Wikipedia’s English site. Also notable is Twitter.com’s usage (this is the site itself, not the API, which reportedly sees ten times more action). Digg is more popular among this group than the NYTimes.com, and gaming site Kongregate makes a strong showing as well. TechCrunch comes up right behind YouPorn (NSFW), which isn’t such a bad place to be in.

In all, RescueTime users spent 44.6% of their time using communication services, beating out work-related apps by a large margin. The trend is probably much worse for the typical user, as RescueTime users are more likely to try to stay on task (in theory, at least).

We’ve included the full spreadsheet below, and would love to see further analysis in the comments.

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eBay has gone on the record saying that they will sell Skype if they fail to find ways of using Skype to support its core ecommerce business.

Richard Waters at the Financial Times got the scoop directly from eBay’s CEO John Donahoe:

“What we’re testing this year are the synergies,” Mr Donahoe told the Financial Times this week after Ebay reported its latest earnings. “If the synergies are strong, we’ll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we’ll reassess it.” That could lead to the disposal of the business, he indicated.

eBay purchased Skype 3 years ago and has failed to find ways of using Skype across its other products in this time, so it is unlikely that miracles will start happening for Skype in the next 8 months. A sale is likely late this year or in the first half of next year.

The news comes despite strong Q1 figures for Skype and others reports suggesting a Google buyout or alliance may be in the works.

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Something big is brewing between Google and Ebay’s Skype, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Actually, for weeks now there have been low level rumors of the two companies talking, but nailing down any details was difficult. New information, however, suggests that they are in current talks and that a partnership or outright acquisition may be announced in the near future.

Skype, acquired in late 2005 for $3.1 billion, has been a financial albatross around Ebay’s neck. eBay removed Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom in October 2007, reportedly due to frustration at the financial performance of Skype. Ebay also negotiated down the huge earnout due to Skype stockholders and took a $936 million one-time loss around the transaction.

It’s clear that eBay wants to either unload Skype, or significantly drive performance.

Google, by contrast, is just beginning to think about how to dominate the voice space. They have a VOIP service through GTalk, a free 411 service and GrandCentral, a telephone management service they acquired last year for $50 million.

All of these products reside under VP Product Management Salar Kamangar and his new right hand guy, Bradley Horowitz. Other key players in the group are Wesley Chen, the product manager who championed the GrandCentral acquisition, and GrandCentral founders Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet.

That core team should be at the CTIA Wireless Conference in Las Vegas, but we’ve heard that they either aren’t there or at the very least aren’t showing up for scheduled meetings (if anyone at the event sees them, let me know). That doesn’t mean the team is busy working on a partnership or acquisition of Skype instead of attending the conference. But given that we’ve heard from sources close to the deal that something is happening between the companies, it’s not a stretch, either.

What does Skype bring to the table? Scalable technology and a proven platform in the VOIP, VOIP2POTS and P2P Video, to start - 100 billion VOIP minutes have been logged on Skype to date. At any given time there are 10 million simultaneous users on Skype. Skype is the glue that can pull all the nascent Google products together.

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Since launching four and half years ago, Skype users have talked to each other for 100 billion minutes, and that is just counting free Skype-to-Skype phone calls. Of course, many of those calls would never have been made if Skype didn’t exists, so you cannot count the entire 100 billion minutes as a loss for the phone companies. But a significant chunk of that has got to be eating away at phone company profits.

Skype’s owner, eBay, is not necessarily the winner here either. While Skype has been a boon for consumers, it’s eBay that is footing the bill. Even at the reduced $3.1 billion acquisition price after the write-down, eBay still ended up paying roughly 3 cents a minute for all of those calls. I think I pay less with Verizon.

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Skype’s anticipated mobile phone is now official. Britain’s mobile carrier 3 will start selling it on November 2 in the UK, and later this year in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau and Sweden. This will be the first mobile phone with Skype built in, meaning that calls to other Skype members are free. The phone will cost about $100 with a pay-as-you-go plan (for the non-Skype calls), or free with a monthly contract.

This is an enlightened move on the part of 3. If people are going to start bypassing the mobile carriers with free Internet calls, the carriers might as well get in front of the trend and start cannibalizing themselves. At least this way, 3 captures the non-Skype calls and wins loyalty points among its Skype-using subscribers. Anything that reduces customer churn is worth a try in the eyes of the carriers.

[For more on this story see TechCrunch UK]

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Now that eBay’s Skype write-down has caused it to take a $936 million loss last quarter and founder Niklas Zennstrom is out, the question is what will eBay do with Skype. According to one source, the remaining Skype/eBay management team is holing up in London this week to try to figure out how to actually make money from Skype. (While the business is on track to pull in just over $400 million in revenues this year, expectations were higher).

The problem with the $3.1 billion Skype acquisition from the start is that it never really made much sense for eBay. Unlike Paypal, which accounted for about 15 percent of payments on eBay when it was purchased five years ago, nobody uses Skype to close deals on eBay. In fact, one of the original justifications of the deal was that it would help “increase the velocity” of transactions on eBay by allowing buyers and sellers to actually speak to one another for bigger items where more communication might be necessary. But Skype has yet to be implemented on eBay itself (someone please correct me if I’m wrong). The reason for that is because if buyers and sellers could call each other, that would effectively allow them to go around the eBay marketplace. You and I could close a deal on an old camera or bicycle without paying eBay its cut.

Meg Whitman, who just left the stage at the Web 2.0 conference, admits: “We weren’t quite dead-on with the strategy that we thought was the strategy.” Yet she says she remains bullish on Skype’s potential, and defends the acquisition, reasoning that, “In this business the cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”

The best bet for Skype right now is to expand into other areas of voice communications like mobile, and make more deals to embed Skype into big Websites like MySpace. Just don’t expect to see a lot of integration into eBay itself.

(A bit off topic, Whitman also hinted on-stage that eBay is thinking about how to blow out Paypal into a full-fledged identity and reputation system that you can take with you all across the Web. The Web needs a reputation system and a way to authenticate people’s true identities. This is right in eBay’s sweet spot. People already trust PayPal.)

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Starting in November, MySpace’s 110 million active users will be able to make free calls using Skype-enabled version of MySpace’s instant messaging client, MySpaceIM.

This marks the first time that Skype has allowed its technology to be integrated into a 3rd-party application, thereby disassociating the Skype service from the Skype client.

Skype has provided a developer program through which others can build applications initiate functions of the Skype client, but the company never before allowed for seamless integration with its VoIP network.

MySpace users will be able to make calls using MySpaceIM without needing to download any additional Skype software or even to sign up for a Skype account. They will also be able to initiate calls through MySpaceIM by clicking a link that will be displayed under the portraits on MySpace profile pages. Revenue from premium Skype calls (e.g., to landlines) will be split between MySpace and Skype, although details of the split have not yet been disclosed.

In addition, the integration of MySpace and Skype will allow MySpace users to transfer information, such as portraits, from their profiles to their Skype accounts.

MySpace claims that MySpaceIM currently has over 25 million installed users. MySpaceIM with Skype will be launched in 20 countries.

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Like most people, I thought I’d seen everything in terms of phishing scams. Paypal and bank phishing emails are a regular occurrence in most people’s inboxes. Then I received this:

Why in the world would a scammer want my Skype details? I have about $12 AUD in credit, which I suppose could be used to make calls, but it hardly seems worth the effort.

Notably, Gmail did not pick the email up as being a scam.

I checked the html for the email: the alleged skype link goes to a page on cec-icmc.org that is set up to look just like a page from Skype.

A quick search on Google results in other instances of Skype scams, but I didn’t find one exactly like this. In context, I don’t use Skype Out that often and Skype occasionally sends emails telling me that I have to use Skype Out to maintain the Skype Out credit, along with my Skype In number. This phishing scam keeps to the similar theme, in that Skype legitimately does on occasion request account updates.

A word of warning to the many, many Skype users out there: don’t trust emails claiming to be sent by Skype. If you’re already smart to this: good for you.

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Alexa stats up to August 17 show a massive rise in traffic to Skype competitor Gizmo Project and a more modest rise for Grand Central at the peak of this weeks 36 hour Skype outage.

The SIPphone owned Gizmo Project offers a nearly identical package to Skype, but with added features including built in recording, and cross platform compatibility. Gizmo’s traffic tripled in the space of three days and rose to a rank of 8,561 in Alexa from a 3 month average of 19,102.

The Google owned Grand Central offers a one number everywhere telephone service. Whilst the service doesn’t compete with Skype in the softphone market, the service does provide functionality that competes with Skype services such as Skype In. According to Alexa, Grand Central hit a 4 week high on Friday with a 33% increase in rank over its 3 month average.

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Skype has suffered a major service outage that started from approximately 3am PST Thursday.

Skype advised that their engineering team had determined that the downtime was due to a software issue, with the problem expected to be solved “within 12 to 24 hours.”

The issue was serious enough to cause Skype to temporarily disable all downloads of the Skype client.

Skpe has had a very strong record of uptime previously and this outage is a first in recent memory. In comparison Twitter was down intermittently from 7pm PST Wednesday for around 6 hours, a fairy regular occurrence. Skype remained down at the time of writing as at 7:30am PST.

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