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Why Is Everybody so Down on Skype?

December 1, 2005 |

I just looked a memeoradum, and pretty much all I find is people complaining about Skype 2.0.

Paul Kedrosky asks why this is a .0 release: “While Skype 2.0 isn’t a step backward, as is all-too-often the case with idea-less companies, it is still hard to see why this rates a new .0 release, other than maybe it was a contractual obligation from Skype’s new owner — call it Ebay-told-me-2.0.”

Come on guys - it has video. That alone makes it a worthy .0 release. He also bemoans the “the dearth of new ideas in telephony.” Yep - I agree - nothing to see here but a way of people talking to each other. Nothing innovative about that. Kind of like the phone, radio, tv, microwave, automobile industry in the last fifty years… what do you expect? A new form of human-to-human oral communication? Teleportation? It is called telephony for a reason for Christ’s sake.

Om Malik likewise bemoans the death of third-party plugins that allowed for video conferencing on skype. Skype, which is “is short on new ground breaking ideas,” “is running the risk of alienating the very community that made it great.” But the consumer doesn’t care about the plugins. How many regular users every used a skype plugin (how many even know there is such a thing?)? What made Skype great was that it workd, it was free, and the sound was good. That’s why it was adopted.

 
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