Ransu's Blog

Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis know how to make money on the web (for themselves). First they found file sharing service Kazaa, then Skype and ip-tv Joost. Now, as they still hold some Skype patents, they are back as shareholders with 14% stake.

On “My favorite Tools”-series, I write about online services and devices that I could not live without. First one is Skype.

Since 2003

I have 295 contacts on Skype and 52 of them are currently online. I can reach my network of people from Bangladesh to San Francisco and from Moscow to Kathmandu. I love Skype. I love it. I love it. I been daily user ever since they  launched back in 2003. Somehow I managed to miss my usual username “ransu” as someone else took it before me, so I had to settle for “ransuroc”.

Anyway, Skype is, among with the email, my most important communication tool, beating easily mobile phone. I would much rather give my phone away then stop using Skype.

I talk on Skype only about once a week – but chat is non-stop, pretty much all the time when I am awake. On Skype, I have my son, Junnu, in Finland. Coco, when she is travelling for business. My parents and a sister’s family. It is so easy to ask them “what’s up?” on daily basis, as I happen to live mostly outside of Finland. Junnu sends his favorites from Youtube and Spotify, while my mum uses Skype sometimes almost like an email, or dairy, writing long texts about “what has happened at their countryside living?”

As friends goes, Facebook has taken over that sector, but business – oh boy, I have everybody on Skype.

I work with iPhone developers in Pakistan, designer in Bangkok, CSS/html guy in Bangladesh, Amazon AWS expert in NY and Garmin/Google Maps expert in Atlanta. Everyone is on Skype for a chat and then we do actual project management on 37signals Basecamp.

On advertising sales, I have West Coast sales team in, as well as my ad serving support guys from OpenX (Pasadena, CA and London, UK). Also few ad networks are within a click “start chat” as well as about 1/3 of the websites that I work with on ad sales.

So how to use Skype effectively?

Skype is mainly voice-over-ip (voip) service, but it also has a great chat, group chat, conference call and screen-sharing functions. I use them all, but majority is chat and group-chat.

My trick is to have very low barrier to contact people, and I get straight-to-the-point after quick “hello, how are you?”. Also, I always answer something immediately, so that people learn, that on Skype, I am the quick responder – lead by example, or something like it.

What’s next?

Last fall the was a huge hype around Google Wave, but that hype died (lamed)quick as no-one else used it. Wave looks like a great tool, but I need my contacts to use it (network effect), before it really becomes valuable for me. iChat (Same as Google Talk, AOL IM) is low on penetration outside of USA and MSN Messenger is not just last year, but last decate, and I mean 90’s.

But regardless of Google Wave’s slow start, Google has more in mind in a order to take over the collaboration/chat/phone/voip world. Lately, they been acquiring small voip companies and Google Voice (ex-Grand Central) is already a great service that connects yours calls via Internet (US only at this point).  When Google manages to put Wave, Voice, Talk, Apps and Gmail into one simple-to-use package, Skype will have first real competitor.

Skype’s new owners

When eBay bought Skype back on 2005, ex-CEO  Meg Whitman needed more than 50 pages Powerpoint to explain what a great fit it is, just like PayPal. Well, it wasn’t and eBay finally sold majority to investment group late 2009.  This investment group that includes Marc Andreessen is believed to ignite some new fire to Skype’s product development, and I am excited to see next big developments on my favorite communications tool.

Tweet This Post