Insight

Milestones are significant for us, not just because they’re big numbers, but because they reflect the actions of people around the world using Skype to stay in touch with friends, family and colleagues. Right now, there are 20 million people around the world, saying hello (or bonjour, or hola, or 喂, or tere) to their parents across continents, having dinner with their spouses from hotel rooms across countries, and keeping an eye on their pets from across town.

But big numbers are hard to get our heads around – what does 20 million actually mean? We can think about it in terms of the number of families kept closer together, or the number of businesses saving money and staying ahead of the competition. Right now. The number of new babies being shown off to adoring grandparents, or the number of romances being kept alive. Right now.

In fact, in the 30 seconds since you started reading this, those 20 million people have made around 1,600 hours of free Skype-to-Skype calls and 200 hours of calls to landlines and mobiles. That’s a lot of people talking. Right now.

Just watched this great video about intimacy in online conversations - Stefana Broadbent finds that on mobiles, 80% of a typical person's calls are made to 4 or 5 people; on Skype, they're to just two people.

She also talks about the way that video calls connect families; how else do you have dinner with your family back in Sao Paulo when you're in Italy?

Well worth watching

Jessie Dylan (related) gathered up some of the Internet's pioneers – no idea how Skype's Chris Libertelli sneaked in there – and produced this video. It has to be one of the best overviews of why Net Neutrality matters.

Just think - without an open Internet, the millions of hours of free voice and video conversations which have already happened today between people using Skype, simply might not have been possible at all.

Jean-Jacques Sahel leads Skype’s Government Relations team in the EU.

After the US FCC, Canada, Google and Verizon speaking in favour of the open Internet, the EU needs to commit through action

At the beginning of last week, the CEOs of Skype, Sony Electronics, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet, telecommunications and media firms published an open letter to the US Federal Communications Commission to support the proposal to introduce rules to protect the open Internet, i.e. users’ right to access and use what they want online, which we applauded earlier.

Also, in a joint blog posting released late Wednesday, US network operator Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam and Google CEO Eric Schmidt said they think it’s important for the Internet to remain an unrestricted and open platform.

On Wednesday the Canadian authorities issued a framework by which they will judge whether Internet service providers are discriminating against certain kinds of traffic and content. Then on Thursday, the FCC voted 3 to 2 in favour of developing into formal rules a set of six Internet Principles, designed to safeguard the open Internet.

And in Europe? Well, Skype is of course still arbitrarily blocked by a number of mobile operators, across several EU countries. So are thousands of VoIP and Peer-to-Peer applications. We hear however that the European Commission has circulated a draft declaration on net Neutrality which mentions the ‘high importance’ it attaches to ‘preserving the open and neutral character of the Internet, taking full account of the will of the co-legislators now to enshrine net neutrality as a policy objective and regulatory principle’. The Commission goes on to promise a review of the problem will be carried out, with recommendations made to the European Parliament by late 2010, monitoring the market in the meantime and stamping out on abuses using its existing powers. This act of faith by the EU for an open Internet is welcome.

But so far, we’ve seen no action by the European authorities to stamp out these blatant abuses of what Internet users can do online. The excuse that ‘net neutrality is an American problem’ just doesn’t wash anymore; it’s too convenient and simply not true, as millions of users and thousands of VoIP, peer-to-peer or video streaming innovators can attest because they are blocked or their traffic degraded by operators throughout Europe, just like Skype. The fact that politicians haven’t heard about their problems is because these guys are just too small – they don’t have armies of lobbyists like the big operators do.

The thousands of innovators that depend on an open Internet to continue to innovate and put their products, applications, services and content online cannot wait years for lengthy political debates to take place, or for the market to ‘correct itself’ – they’ll have gone bankrupt before then. Users cannot wait either, before they can freely use what they have paid for – full Internet access, whether it’s fixed or mobile.

People started complaining about high costs of calling from abroad on mobile phones in the late 1990s – it took 10 years and the market didn’t correct itself so we ended up with the so-called Roaming Regulation to force prices down. Now, with the threat to the open Internet that is on our hands, we cannot wait: the European Commission should be bold and use any of its powers (such as the new Roaming Regulation or its mandate to preserve the functioning of the internal European market), to stamp out abuse, at the earliest opportunity. If it needs more powers, then the Commission should make legislative proposals to get them, urgently.

And remember: you can sign the open Internet petition for Europe, and feel free to talk to your parliamentarians and write to your regulators to protect Your Internet.

I’m Neil, Skype’s General Manager for our global consumer business. What does that mean in simple terms? That I’m responsible for managing our desktop product lineup – Skype for Windows, Mac and Linux – as well as looking after our website, our online marketing and the Skype brand as a whole.

I don’t do this all single-handedly, thankfully, and I have a great team here at Skype who contribute to the incredible products we make. Nevertheless, there are some areas where an outside perspective can be invaluable, and that’s why we’ve just appointed three great agencies to help us develop the Skype brand and help us with our global advertising. The Skype brand isn’t just about our logo, or clouds and rainbows. It’s about what you, the Skype user, think about us as a company and the products we make. How you feel about your experience of using the Skype software, and how you describe Skype to your friends.

Wolff Olins, TBWA\ and Rapp will be our partners on our journey to enhance this iconic global brand and all that it means to you, and I’m looking forward to working with them in the months to come.

Brian O’Shaughnessy is Skype’s Head of Global Communications.

Coined by the author Malcom Gladwell, ‘tipping points’ have been defined as ‘the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.’

This momentum for change reached epic heights in the United States last week through both the rhetoric of perhaps the most important communications policy regulator, and the rapidly evolving opinions of the American people.

In Washington DC, the new Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Julius Genachowski, shared a stage with Skype president Josh Silverman and other communications leaders and outlined his plan for net neutrality rules to allow for transparency and non-discrimination in the wireless ecosystem. Skype’s Christopher Libertelli, Skype’s Senior Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a compelling post on the significance of the FCC announcement and what it means for the average mobile Internet user.

As a follow-up to the exciting news by the FCC last week, Skype also has new consumer survey data on mobile Internet attitudes that strongly support Chairman Genachowski’s visions and what we at Skype consider the future of communications.

The survey results show that the vast majority of Americans think wireless providers have too much power over deciding which software applications they can put on their mobile phones, and that control instead belongs to the individual user.

The Zogby findings underscore the public support the FCC has in pushing for increased mobile openness and consumer choice. 64% of Americans support the FCC’s recent decision to open an inquiry into competition among wireless providers, and two-thirds of Americans favor greater consumer control over which applications should be allowed to run on a mobile device.

Other key findings from the poll include:

Control Belongs to Consumers – Americans think wireless providers have too much control over how consumers use their handsets. The individual consumer is best suited to make those decisions.

• 59% of Americans think that wireless providers have too much power over how consumers can use their handsets.
• 67.3% say that it is consumers who are best suited to decide which software applications should be allowed to run on a mobile handset. By comparison, 8.7% say wireless providers should decide, 8.9% handset manufacturers and only 2.7% pick the federal government.

Skype Increases the Value of Wireless Service – Americans see value in software applications, such as Skype, that allow them to make unlimited free calls over wireless networks.

• More than half of Americans (54%) agree that an Internet calling software application, such as Skype, that allows them to make free calls to anywhere in the world on a mobile phone increases the value of a mobile phone service.
• Likewise, 50% say they would be more likely to pay for a wireless service that allows them to use software applications like Skype to make unlimited free calls anywhere in the world.

Affordable, High-Speed Mobile Internet Improves Lives – Three-quarters (75%) of Americans agree that affordable high-speed Internet access on cell phones or other mobile devices would help some people get access to information and technology that will improve their lives.

Mobile Internet’s Digital Divide – When it comes to accessing the Internet on a mobile phone, frequency of usage depends on age, income, education and where people live.

• Younger Americans more frequently use the Internet on their cell phones or mobile devices to access email, news and other types of information. 33% of those ages 30-49 access the Internet daily on their phones, compared to just 8% of Americans over 65.
• Those earning over $100K a year (37%) are more likely to access the Internet daily than those earning less than $25K (17%). Likewise, those with a college degree (31%) are more likely than those without one (19%).
• Also, daily usage is more popular in large cities (31%) versus in rural areas (11%).

At Skype, we believe that a true open mobile Internet will provide benefits to people in all regions and income levels.

The findings are clear – most consumers favor greater choice, flexibility and control over managing their personal mobile communications, and a majority support the FCC’s efforts to put more control in their hands. But this move is also a win for device makers and network service providers, as consumers will see increased value in their products and services when in a more open broadband ecosystem.

Consumers want it. Critical policymakers are supporting it. A tipping point is upon us.

Zogby surveyed 2,016 U.S. adults, ages 18 and up, from September 15-17, 2009.

After the FCC introduces Internet non-discrimination and transparency principles, the EU too should unequivocally protect users and the open Internet – sign the petition to support it.

Today I am in Brussels speaking at a European Commission public hearing on the future of the Internet economy (‘post-i2010’). Innovation without permission will be the key theme of my remarks. It will resonate with the important news this week that the US communications regulator the FCC will seek to introduce two new Internet principles to safeguard the open Internet: non-discrimination and transparency.

Chris (aka Christopher Libertelli, Skype’s Senior Director of Government & Regulatory Affairs for the Americas) commented in detail on this historical move in his blog post yesterday.

Wouldn’t it make sense to protect innovation and improve consumer choice in Europe, too?

Well, clearly it does. Negotiations on the new EU Telecom laws are rumoured to be re-starting behind closed doors from next Tuesday (29th September). As I said on Friday, these revised laws need to be finalised in a way that guarantees the open Internet.

Your Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and your Government should ensure that you are free to do what you want with the Internet connection you paid for, whether on fixed or mobile. So do speak to them in favour of the open Internet – please.

You can also sign this new independent petition which asks for the adoption in Europe of the principles recommended by the FCC and by the Norwegian network neutrality guidelines (PDF): if you believe Europe also merits an Internet that is free and open, please sign this petition and share it with your friends using the ‘Share it’ links on the page.

Christopher Libertelli leads Skype’s Government Relations team in the US.

Yesterday was a big step forward in the push for net neutrality and mobile openness. I had the pleasure of witnessing an important discussion at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC with Josh Silverman speaking on a panel to outline Skype’s point of view, which simply comes down to this: Consumers should be entitled to greater choice, flexibility and control over the applications they use on their mobile phones.

Mobile openness is a win for individual consumers and for the entire broadband ecosystem. There is only one Internet, and network neutrality principles should be applied allowing for a consistent approach across all the ways consumers access the Internet.

Yesterday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski also spoke at the Brookings Institution to announce his plans for greater mobile openness and net neutrality rules. He proposed two new guidelines:

1. Providers of broadband Internet should not ‘discriminate’ against any lawful Internet content or applications, and should put the choice into the hands of consumers to decide the winners, instead of disfavoring certain applications because they compete in a provider’s market space.
2. Broadband Internet providers should operate with ‘transparency’ and disclose their network management practices to allow people to understand why certain network traffic is being slowed or blocked.

We welcome FCC Chairman Genachowski’s balanced approach and see it as a milestone for innovation policy. If adopted, it will open up more choice and give you ample flexibility to choose applications like Skype. Significant public policy shifts happen in waves. As the pace of change has accelerated in our space and innovation has become more modular (with each new innovation building upon the innovations that have become before it), public policy cycles have likewise quickened in America.

From the Kingsbury Commitment of 1913; to the Divestiture of AT&T, to the 1996 Telecommunications Act; we may well look back at yesterday’s program at Brookings and see Chairman Genachowski’s and Josh Silverman’s presentation as the beginning of the next great shift in telecommunications policy – characterized by a new ‘multi-modal’ model of competition policy that places you at the center of a broadband ecosystem.

The FCC has taken their own open and transparent approach with the launch of a new website, OpenInternet.gov to encourage public participation and comments, so feel free to share what's on your mind. You can also watch a complete video of the event on the Brookings Institution website.

UPDATE: I recently sat down with Washington Post reporter Cecilia Kang for a Q&A about AT&T's recent decision to allow Internet voice services for the iPhone on its network and what that means for the debate on net neutrality.

Jean-Jacques Sahel leads Skype’s Government Relations team in the EU.

On Wednesday the European Parliament re-elected Jose Manuel Barroso as President of the European Commission. Why is it relevant for Skype? Because Mr Barroso made some very important points in his plan of action (PDF) for the European Commission in the next 5 years.

Beside a welcome focus on innovation, he talked about the need for “active intervention to tackle the bottlenecks” in the broadband world, stressing that “Openness is critical to Europe's future competitiveness.” We’ll have to see how that translates into reality, but I’m reading this as a promise that those who control access to the Internet won’t be able to abuse their power to decide what people access and do online. We’ll engage with Mr Barroso and other European authorities to ensure that this is taken forward urgently.

Later this month, negotiations will start in Brussels to finalise the revised EU regulations for telecoms. Mr Barroso’s colleague Viviane Reding the European Commissioner for the Information Society confirmed that protections for users will be included in the new EU laws:

“Under the new EU rules, national telecoms authorities will have the powers to set minimum quality levels for network transmission services so as to promote ‘net neutrality’ and ‘net freedoms’ for European citizens.”

European Commission press release, 6 May 2009, after the European Parliament’s vote on the revised EU Telecoms regulations

Despite this welcome news, many Skype users throughout Europe still face censorship when they want to communicate online. Some operators are still blocking Skype traffic or talking of charging Internet subscribers more for their traffic just because it happens to be VoIP / Skype, even if they’re already paying for Internet access. It’s wrong, and we need to make sure that the revised EU regulations are finalized, understood and enforced in a way that protects fair competition, consumer choice and fundamental net freedoms.

I am cautiously optimistic that this will happen: Commissioner Reding said on another occasion that the new EU telecoms laws will “further strengthen the tools available against anti-competitive behaviour and discrimination with regard to Voice-over-IP applications.” (in a response to a Parliamentary question by Danish MEP Mrs Schaldemose).

Earlier this week (14-15 September), the Council of Europe – the inter-governmental body in charge of the respect of human rights in Europe - co-organised the European Dialogue on Internet Governance in Geneva which gathered participants ranging from NGOs to Internet registries, members of parliaments from the European Parliament (MEPs) and from various European countries, and ISPs. The conference agreed on the basic principle that “Users should be able to access, use and distribute the content, services and applications of their choice, with the various ‘gatekeepers’ in the ICT value chain respectful of their responsibilities in this regard.”

A working group will now be set up under the auspices of the Council of Europe to develop guidance on protecting and fostering unrestricted user access to online content, applications and services, taking into consideration in particular the applicability of fundamental human rights to the open Internet, meaningful transparency and consumer choice, innovation, etc. Next to that, a European traffic management and non-discrimination forum will also be created to bring all the actors of the debate around the table to share and agree appropriate practices.

Also this week, a number of activist and consumer organizations have written to European Parliamentarians to ask them to ensure that Net Neutrality is protected in the final version of the new EU Telecoms laws. Have a look at their open letter here. If you care about your online freedoms, you may want to tell your MEP the same thing.

Pressure is mounting on network operators to respect their customers and let them access and do what they want online. Like 3/Hutchison (of 3 Skypephone fame) before them, O2 in Germany have announced that they would do just that: in August, ‘bowing to the inevitable’ as the press reported it, ‘O2 Germany has become the first major cellular operator in the country allowing mobile VoIP applications on handsets without charging a premium’.

Many more will follow. The contrary would be to step back in time, to the dark ages of control and censorship. We look to Members of the European Parliament and EU governments to ensure that they finalise the new EU telecoms laws this Autumn in a way that’s fit for the 21st century by clearly protecting the open Internet, allowing future generations the freedom of knowledge, expression and communication that they can and should enjoy as a basic human right.

We’ve been hearing reports that spam levels are increasing on Skype, and I want to reassure you that we don’t take this sort of thing lightly.

Unfortunately, Skype, like any other communications software, has a small minority of users who abuse the software. In order to deal with people who send unsolicited messages, we have resources dedicated to a number of ongoing anti-spam initiatives, focused around three areas:

• Prevention: working behind the scenes to make it harder for spammers to send messages
• Reaction: making it easier to report spam, and fine-tuning the way we deal with those reports
• Identification: making it easier to identify messages from unfamiliar users

Please keep an eye on this blog, where we’ll announce the public-facing bits of our approach as we release them. In the meantime, please continue to block and report abusive users to us – doing so will help us to identify and deal with spammers.

Most importantly, however, you can rest assured that we’re working hard behind the scenes to combat spam, and will take action against spammers where appropriate – with the objective of keeping Skype a productive and friendly place for users like you.

Reporting spammers

To report spam directly from Skype, you need Skype 4.0 or 4.1 for Windows, or Skype 2.8 for Mac – download the latest version free if you don’t have it already.

In Skype for Windows

When you get a contact request, click Block, then check Report abuse from this person and click Block.

To report someone who’s sending you instant messages, right click on them in the conversation pane, and click Block This Person. Then check Report abuse from this person and click Block.

In Skype for Mac

When you get a contact request, choose Block this person from contacting you in the future, then check Report abuse from this person and click Block.

To report someone who’s sending you instant messages, right click on them in the conversation drawer, and click Block. Then check Report abuse from this person and click Block.

Jean-Jacques Sahel leads Skype's Government Relations team in the EU.

In our drive to promote innovation and users' rights on the Internet, the last few weeks have been simply amazing. An update is due.

Last month, we were all surprised that the European Parliament took a stand and went against EU governments by adopting by a very large majority an amendment to the proposed revised EU telecoms regulations, which ensures that Internet users can only be disconnected upon receipt of a proper court order, rather than an administrative order.

Then last week (9 June), the French Constitutional Court (the equivalent of the Supreme Court in the US or the 'Law Lords' for the English Courts), citing the founding principles of the French Republic the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, confirmed that a similar legal proposal in France to disconnect users suspected of downloading illegal material was not acceptable.

First, this is because it negates the presumption of innocence. Secondly, and crucially, the Court underlined that powers to disconnect a user from the Internet amount to restricting freedom of expression and communication - the freedom to speak, write and print (See the decision and in particular Article 16 which details that "[...] pouvoirs peuvent conduire à restreindre l'exercice, par toute personne, de son droit de s'exprimer et de communiquer librement, notamment depuis son domicile [...]". Now get on to your favourite online translation website :)

When they met last Thursday 12 June at their regular Council of Telecoms Ministers, as expected the EU governments formally refused to accept the will of the European Parliament, which means that the review of EU telecoms regulations will resume in the Autumn, when the two sides will try to come to a compromise on this amendment on fundamental user freedoms.

This next, and final, phase of the negotiation should be fun. It goes to some of the more fundamental issues in society and for the Internet. For us at Skype, it's not a theoretical debate however: Skype users are regularly refused their right to express themselves and communicate freely. And it's not only governments that do that: some network operators fancy themselves as 21st century censors, degrading, blocking, discriminately charging for Skype traffic just because they don't like it.

Thankfully, not all network operators are that short-sighted, others operators know that Skype can benefit everyone - just check out the latest offer from the mobile operator '3' in the UK, which is just so cool - giving you free Skype to Skype calls from your mobile without the need to top up ever again (See here and here).

There was some news on this front too last week, and the picture is getting even more confusing: both Vodafone and T-Mobile (in Germany) have announced that they are not going to block Skype and VoIP anymore. So they have resolved their technical problems, then, have they? Well, sort of.

We always knew, and explained, that Skype works perfectly well on mobile networks and is a low-bandwidth application (only 8-20 kbps on average), so technical arguments for blocking Skype wouldn't last long. Instead they're now asking customers to pay extra if they want to use Skype.

Why are they introducing this measure, anyway? Errrr... So far, there's some really vague explanation on the T-Mobile website citing technical constraints and to be fair, it is difficult to gauge from the short argument they give what exactly they are referring to. As for Vodafone, they have yet to publish anything formal. The only thing we have from them is a speech by one executive given at the VIB Mobile Regulation and Competition Law conference in Brussels on 10 June 2009, who says according to the press that it's got nothing to do with technical difficulties, but with economic considerations:

"If you don't want to make a commitment to use voice, it is effectively saying 'I would like to substitute existing voice usage for potentially voip and other services'. You can do that, but you can't do it without making some spending commitment on voice services as well. Our investment in the customer, on the assumption they would spend a certain amount each month would disappear. That makes the economics unsustainable."

So it's about continuing to make large profits, then, not a technical constraint as has been claimed all along? No wonder policymakers, like consumers, find all this confusing.

Then yesterday (Tuesday 16th June) the Digital Britain plan (PDF) was released. In the UK, it's not just Skype usage but even access to the Skype.com website that is censored by some mobile operators. In parallel, millions of people in Britain work in ICT and creative industries, representing 8% of UK GDP. And yet, there does not seem to be much in the report about putting in place policies to encourage innovation in services and applications, or about UK Internet users and their right to access and use the services and apps of their choice online. We will be trying to engage with the UK authorities, especially to ensure that their future work about encouraging more people to access and use the Internet, delivering competition and meaningful consumer choice, and maximising the economic and social benefits of the Internet, is not stifled by censorship or restrictive actions imposed by self-interested companies.

Looking ahead, what do we need European governments and parliamentarians to do? We think that the EU telecoms legislation needs to be finalised in a way that clearly supports fundamental human rights - if the EU doesn't show the way in human rights, who will?

EU law should ensure that citizens can exercise their freedom of expression and communication and can benefit from Internet access that is open, taking into account the requirements expressed by users to make use of, and distribute, content, applications and services on the Internet. Access to Internet content, services and applications, as confirmed by the French Conseil Constitutionnel, is an explicit part of the fundamental rights of citizens to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference and regardless of frontiers. Additionally, unrestricted Internet access to content, services and applications is also a necessity for the preservation of the effectiveness of European and national policies designed to combat social exclusion, promote education, training, employment, etc.

As for all of us, Skype users? We should make our voice heard. If you can't use Skype on your mobile for any reason, call your ISP and complain. Write to your local politician and/or communications regulator, and let them know there is something very wrong going on with what your Internet provider is letting you access. More on that soon.

Jean-Jacques Sahel leads Skype's Government Relations team in the EU.

Yesterday I travelled to Brussels to take part in a TV panel discussion on the revision of the EU’s telecoms legislation (which should be finalised by early May in Brussels) with two Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), David Hammerstein and Alexander Alvaro. We talked about the whole of the Electronic Communications Framework, and touched on one of our key concerns – the arbitrary blocking and degradation of applications like Skype. You’ll shortly able to watch a video of the debate online.

Then from Brussels, it will be off to Prague today where the current Czech Presidency of the European Union is holding its ‘High-Level Seminar on e-Communications’ on the theme of "Future Europe: Modern Communications for Everyone". I am lucky enough to take part in a panel looking at how the adaptation of the EU directives into national laws in each EU member state could improve the daily lives of Europeans. On the same panel will be a leading MEP, a UK government representative, Google and others including AT&T. No doubt this will be fun.

This comes at a very opportune time, as the German Federation of consumers has just issued the following statement supporting Skype and other innovators against arbitrary blocking by operators:

The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband) regards the contractual exclusion of VoIP services such as "Skype" by T-Mobile or other operators and access providers as violation of the principles of network neutrality. It is quite obvious that such exclusions aim to protect own services on own networks against unwelcome, that is to say cheaper, competitive offerings.

It is unacceptable for the Federation of German Consumer Organisations (Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband), that particularly those mobile telecom providers, which are likely to benefit from vacant radio frequencies (‘Digital Dividend’) for wireless broadband supply, at the same time block the access of consumers to attractive services over their wireless infrastructures.

The EU and the national legislation are therefore called on to commit the operators and the access providers to generally ensure network neutrality by appropriate guidelines in the relevant European directives as well as in the German Telecommunications Act. In addition, both the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) and the federal states in Germany should impose obligations for the recipients in the course of the intended allocation of capacities of the "Digital Dividend", in order to preclude a blockade of certain services.

This mirrors previous statements by the European Consumers’ Association BEUC and France’s Que Choisir / UFC. Governments and Parliamentarians will now have to respond to this very clear call by consumer representatives to take action against bad behaviour and insert the relevant protections in the new EU legislation on telecoms.

There are also rumours in the press that, following Deutsche Telekom’s April’s Fool announcement that they would block Skype even on Wifi, the European Commission would be preparing ‘binding guidelines’ to prevent operators blocking VoIP. I am looking forward to hearing more about that in Prague – and hope it may be true, and only a prelude to clearer legislation ensuring that users can access and do what they want on the Internet.

If you want a good dose of Telecoms and IT policy and regulatory thinking, you can view a live video stream of this EU High-Level event, provided with the support of Skype. Enjoy

As promised, I’m back with an update – and it’s no surprise that we’ve stormed past the 2 million download milestone. This means an average rate of 2-3 downloads per second since the app first appeared on the 31st March.

Many of those downloading Skype for iPhone are new users, and, if you’re one of them, I’d like to offer you a special welcome: it’s good to have you on board. If you haven’t already done so, head to a WiFi zone and make your first call – I’m confident you’ll be impressed by the audio quality.

It’s this sort of thing which gets us really excited: Skype for iPhone isn’t just about giving existing users more flexibility, it’s about bringing high quality voice calls to millions of people around the world – many of whom have never used Skype before. And, of course, we haven’t forgotten about other mobile platforms either

The Skype for iPhone team are already working tirelessly on the next release, which should be with you very soon. I’ll post here when it’s ready, and you should also see notifications on your device or in iTunes. In the meantime, keep that feedback coming in, and help us make Skype for iPhone even better.

The editors of LAPTOP, the leading mobile technology magazine and Web site, have named Skype for iPhone CTIA's Best Mobile Lifestyle Application.

As Scott said last week, Skype is mobilising - and with over 1 million downloads of the Skype for iPhone application in under 48 hours, it's pretty clear that's the case. For many people, it's been their first experience of the transformative power of free Skype-to-Skype calls, and just think what we could achieve if it worked over 3G too

But, of course, it's not just about the iPhone, it's about the mobile world as a whole - when the lite version of Skype comes to BlackBerry smartphones later this year, Skype will be available on nearly 90% of all smartphone devices, for example, and that's just the start. We're serious about this stuff - and serious about breaking down barriers to conversation, working together with hardware manufacturers and mobile networks to make Skype available everywhere.

In less than two days, Skype for iPhone has been downloaded more than one million times – around six downloads every second.

This is a phenomenal performance, and we’re confident that it’s one of the fastest-downloaded iPhone apps ever. We’ll be back next week with an update, but for now, Skype on

Robert Miller is Skype’s General Counsel.

As you may have heard, this week Skype announced that its highly anticipated application, Skype™ for iPhone, is now available on the Apple App Store. The app also adds Skype calling and instant messaging to any second generation iPod touch with a compatible headset and microphone.

We are very excited to have launched Skype on iPhone, which so many users had been asking for. We have worked with Apple to ensure that users can have a true Skype experience on their iPhones, with beautiful interface and great voice quality. Also, in the summer, a Skype-ready handset will also be launched by Nokia as part of its N-series range. This is part of Skype’s efforts to enable all Skype users to use the software wherever, whenever they want to.

An interesting fact: at the time of writing, 24 hours after launch, more than 600,000 downloads of the software had taken place on the App Store, and Skype ranks as the number one iPhone download in more than 40 countries around the world, from the US to Brazil, France and China.

What amazes me is that Skype is the number one download on the App Store in Germany, and yet the country’s dominant telecom operator Deutsche Telekom has already made it known that it would block the use of Skype on iPhone (and on Blackberry), both for its mobile network customers, and at its Wifi hotspots. (as reported in the German online press and today in the American media)

I find it quite telling that Deutsche Telekom would be so bold as to announce this arbitrary blocking of Skype. They pretend that their action has to do with technical concerns: this is baseless. Skype works perfectly well on iPhone, as hundreds of thousands of people globally can already readily attest. But their announcement also demonstrates that some operators do not fear the customer or regulatory consequences of their bad behaviour. It’s worth noting that even if German consumers wanted to change mobile providers, they could not: like Deutsche Telekom, every other German mobile operator contractually forbids consumers from using VoIP applications. (this is the same in France, actually).

This is a real shame: many other operators around the world know very well that people want to use innovative Internet applications, like Skype, and that’s the reason they pay their ISP to access the Internet in the first place.

On top of that, there is no technical justification for this arbitrary blocking of Skype, and it represents a barrier to online business put in place by a private company just because they can, because they control access to the Internet.

Yet, no one can do anything about it: German or EU regulation does not forbid such blatantly unfair practices, and the new EU legislation for telecoms which the European Parliament and European governments are supposed to adopt later this month will not help either, it seems from the latest texts being considered in Brussels: it may even make things worse, by legitimizing restrictions put in place by operators to users’ Internet access, as long as they inform consumers.

We are trying to change things, together with other Internet companies like Google, Yahoo, DailyMotion, or Price Minister, and with the strong support of consumer associations. (More from Skype and at the site of the European Consumers’ Organisation – PDF)

But European politicians need to hear our call now before they vote on the new legislation on 21 April, or there is a strong risk that very soon consumers will be stopped from enjoying such cool products as Skype for iPhone, or Facebook, or Flickr or Twitter in many places, not just Germany.

The Internet was conceived as an open network and this has been the root of the dynamism it has enabled. Skype passionately believes that consumers should be entitled to access an open Internet on a variety of devices and on fixed and mobile connections to the Internet. Our efforts, in particular with North American and European policymakers recently, seek to empower consumers to choose the mobile phone features and Web applications that they want; remove any operator-imposed barriers that restrict choice; and encourage mobile networks to open up to software innovators. Networks are converging and Skype-enabled devices can be used across different kinds of wireless networks. That’s why Skype supports and champions a consistent approach to open devices and applications across all broadband networks. Firmly establishing this consumer right will maximize consumer choice and encourage innovation, and it will benefit everyone in the industry.

Skype’s Government Relations team has been advocating this consumer right around the world pretty much since Skype started. We’ve always been passionate about giving consumers what they want, letting them choose, and not be constrained by existing powers and old ways of doing things.

We hope that governments and legislators will heed this call coming from Skype, the wider Internet industry, and consumers, to ensure open access to the Internet, everywhere, on any device, on any network.

In under 36 hours after it first appeared, Skype for iPhone has hit the number one spot in the following countries, being the most downloaded free app in the App Store:

Australia · Austria · Belgium · Brazil · Chile · China · Croatia · Czech Republic · Denmark · Finland · France · Germany · Greece · Hungary · Ireland · Israel · Italy · Japan · Kuwait · Luxembourg · Netherlands · New Zealand · Norway · Poland · Portugal · Qatar · Romania · Russia · Singapore · Slovakia · Slovenia · South Africa · Spain · Sri Lanka · Sweden · Switzerland · Taiwan · UAE · UK · USA

Oh, and we’re in the top ten everywhere else in the world

I spend a lot of time travelling – I’m in Luxembourg and London one week, San Jose the next, and Tokyo the week after that. Each and every week, no matter which city or country I’m visiting, I get asked the same questions: Why can’t I use Skype on my cell phone? When will I be able to take Skype with me on my iPhone? Is Skype really serious about going mobile? And it’s not just me – Skype t–shirts are a magnet for questions like that

Thanks to the hard work of our software engineers, I’m now proud to be able to direct these inquiring minds (including yours) to a complete range of rich Skype software for mobile devices powered by every single one of the world’s six major mobile operating systems – Android, BlackBerry, iPhone OS, Java, Symbian and Windows Mobile.

Update: As of October 2009, Skype for BlackBerry is undergoing beta testing among a select group of users. Keep an eye on this blog or follow @skypemobile on Twitter for more information about a wider release.

Let me quickly review Skype’s mobile range:

• Skype for iPhone – Now, millions of iPhone and iPod touch users can take their Skype conversations with them anywhere they go. This application lets you make free Skype–to–Skype calls and calls to landlines and mobiles at Skype’s low rates from any WiFi zone. If you’re in a WiFi zone, you can also receive calls to your Skype online number. The app also supports instant messaging (both one–to–one and group IM) via WiFi, 3G, EDGE or GPRS. You can even update your Skype profile photo with an image taken by the iPhone camera or an existing photo from the Camera Roll.
• Lite version of Skype, soon to also be available for BlackBerry smartphones – This ‘thin client’ version of Skype lets you make Skype–to–Skype calls and SkypeOut calls to landlines and mobiles, send instant messages to/from individuals or groups, and lets you see when your contacts are online. The Beta version for BlackBerry will be appearing in May, so keep your eyes peeled. The Lite version of Skype is currently available on the Android platform and hundreds of the most popular Java–enabled cell phones from the top five handset manufacturers – LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
• Skype for Windows Phones – Skype for Windows Phones has already been downloaded more than 12 million times. The current release, Skype 2.5 for Windows Mobile, improves the user experience and is compatible with more devices than ever before. The newest Beta version 3.0 also adds the ability to send SMS messages at Skype’s low rates, and lets you transfer files to and from other Skype users.

We have gone from having an application for just one mobile OS (Windows Mobile) to covering all six in just three months – a pretty impressive feat. We introduced the lite version of Skype for Android and Java at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January and upgraded Skype for Windows Mobile earlier this month. Now, here at CTIA in Las Vegas, we announced the immediate release of Skype for iPhone and that Skype will soon be running on BlackBerry smartphones. And if you don’t use one of these mobile devices, you can also make low cost Skype calls to mobiles and landlines using a Skype To Go number.

When I spoke at CES, I made an ambitious commitment to our mobile strategy, and now, having delivered on that commitment, we’ve made it pretty clear that Skype really is serious about being a leader in the mobile industry.

Skype generated $551 million in revenue last year and has reported a profit each quarter for the past two years. Thanks to you, we now add 350,000 new users a day and we are making more free and paid features available in each of our products. These impressive numbers make Skype the fastest growing internet company after just five years – ahead of both eBay and Google. So, if things are that good, why do we need to do all of this mobile stuff?

The answer is simple. People around the world are looking for ways to take Skype mobile. We do a lot of research when we develop new versions of Skype, and nearly 80% of participants in our studies have asked us to make Skype more mobile.

But, there is still a lot more to be done. Now that these different mobile Skype applications are available for people like you to download and install on your phones, we need to focus on making it even easier for you to use Skype on the move.

So, we’re talking with mobile device and handset manufacturers about ways to have Skype come pre–loaded and/or deeply integrated on their devices. Our partnership with Nokia to build Skype into some of their NSeries smartphones is a major first step in accomplishing this task. Stay tuned as there will be more to come in the following months.

In addition to partnerships with hardware manufacturers, we’re talking with wireless carriers around the globe about ways that they can package Skype, together with reasonably–priced data plans and optimized devices in such a way to give consumers what they want, without cannibalizing their own voice calling revenues.

We’ve already done this with Hutchison 3, an innovative carrier which operates in Europe, Asia and the Pacific region. They have sold more than 500,000 3 Skypephones, which have attracted new customers to their network, increased their average revenue per user, and kept customers for longer. In today’s business environment, I don’t know of any wireless operator that wouldn’t be interested in doing just that.

Clearly, this is a clear call to action for all of us in the communications industry. It will take greater collaboration between carriers, device manufacturers, and software companies like Skype to deliver what the mobile consumer – especially the next generation of device and data plan buyers – obviously want and expect from their mobile internet experience.

Together, we can bring a rich PC–like communications experience to mobile devices – one that combines voice, video, presence, instant messaging, and file sharing. In doing so, consumers win, as does the industry – as apps like these fuel growth in data usage, and therefore revenues.

Of course, we’ll still continue to innovate on our desktop software, so you can be certain of getting the best user experience wherever you are.

Now next time I go on the road, I’ll be expecting to hear a totally different question from the people I meet in every city that I visit – ‘what is Skype going to dream up next?’

The Skype offices are buzzing today with feedback on the first version of Skype for iPhone – it’s the number one free download in the UK App Store, and there’s been an incredible amount of discussion about it so far.

It’s been just under 24 hours since it first appeared in the Japanese App Store, and we’re not expecting things to quieten down for a little while yet – we’ll be up all night listening and responding to your comments.

In the meantime, please keep the feedback coming in, but based on the discussion so far, I thought it was worth highlighting answers to two of the most commonly asked questions about Skype for iPhone:

Is Skype for iPhone a true VoIP application? Why can’t you make Skype calls over 3G?

Apple’s rules prohibit third-party voice apps like Skype from using 3G networks. Currently there are no other VoIP applications available for the iPhone that allow VoIP calling over 2G or 3G networks.

At Skype, we’re as frustrated by this as you are. We believe very strongly that your mobile network shouldn’t be able to determine the nature of the data that you send and receive. Whether this is browsing photos on Facebook, exploring Google Maps or making a Skype video call – our view is that the data involved should all be treated the same.

We welcome steps taken by mobile network operators s towards greater openness, and support views such at that held by the European Parliament and policymakers in North America: that network operators should not be able to discriminate between different Internet services, be they third party products such as Facebook, Google Maps or Skype, or their own products or services.

Why does Skype for iPhone crash during installation or launch?

Some of you have reported that Skype crashes during installation or launch. Our initial investigations suggest that this may happen on jailbroken phones, where the underlying iPhone software has been modified. Unfortunately we can’t be held responsible if Skype for iPhone misbehaves in these circumstances.

As always, however, we’re keen to hear your feedback – development of Skype for iPhone doesn’t stop here, and your thoughts and ideas can help us make it even better. Leave a comment below, or head to the iPhone area of the Skype Community to share your views.

A quick one, but a good one – in 2008, Skype users made 33 billion minutes of cross-border calls, an increase of 41% on the 2007 figure.

That’s 8% of the total combined international phone and Skype traffic.

The results of a new survey published by communications research company Telegeography also confirm that Skype is the largest provider of cross-border voice communications in the world – a pretty impressive feat for a five year old company

Jean-Jacques Sahel leads Skype’s Government Relations team in the EU.

EU governments and Members of the European Parliament are finalising a review of the telecoms regulations in Europe (the EU’s Electronic Communications Framework). Although that shouldn’t concern a software company like Skype, elements of this legislation touch on the Internet – and we certainly care about that.

Today I am in Brussels at an event hosted at the European Parliament by Danish MEP Karin Riis-Jorgensen. International research agency Synovate is releasing a survey into consumer expectations of broadband commissioned by Google, Skype and Yahoo! The results of the study show that consumers expect Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to allow open, unrestricted access to the Internet.

This study is particularly relevant as some amendments to the EU’s existing legislation that are being considered for adoption by European legislators would allow restrictions to users’ access to the Internet by the backdoor. The idea promoted in these amendments is as follows: that as long as consumers are informed that access to a particular Internet site or application is blocked or degraded, they will simply switch to a competing ISP which does not block access to those services.

That worries us for obvious reasons. Some of these providers - fixed and mobile - block access to VoIP, peer-to-peer or even streaming. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, it is very difficult to switch providers in most countries in Europe.

Still worse, in some countries, all providers in the mobile sector block access to certain applications, meaning that the consumer cannot switch, period. This is a shame; there are enlightened operators and ISPs out there – like mobile operator 3 – who know that Skype and other equally innovative applications are actually good not just for consumers but also for the whole of the ICT industry, by keeping it dynamic and responsive to what consumers want.

In the future, risks of this arbitrary blocking will increase as new networks and increasingly sophisticated network management tools are introduced that allow ISPs far greater precision in deciding which traffic to prioritise, block or degrade.

Our worry is not just about Skype, however. It’s about all of the innovation that the world has enjoyed over the past twenty years thanks to the growth of the Internet. The risk of allowing operators to discriminate against certain traffic for reasons other than the strictly technical management of networks to avoid network congestion would be as if people were told by their electricity supplier which TV or which fridge to buy – depending on whether their electricity supplier has a commercial interest in this or that TV or fridge. This situation would be against citizens’ basic right of choice, against freedom of expression and communication, against competition and innovation. In a period when the world faces difficult economic times we should be ensuring and encouraging demand-driving innovation, not restricting it.

Along with a number of other Internet companies including Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay, Dailymotion and PriceMinister, and user groups, Skype has been asking Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and EU governments to protect end-users rights and to preserve the open Internet. A group of Internet companies issued an official call to European lawmakers (PDF) today which highlighted that:

“Enabling Europeans to access and distribute the information, services and applications of their choice, using whatever device they want, is central to maintaining and encouraging the innovation that the Internet has become famous for. EU lawmakers should make sure that national authorities have the powers they need to act in cases where traffic management by telecommunication companies constitute unnecessary, discriminatory and/or anti-competitive behaviour.”

The Parliament is expected to adopt the new legislation by the middle of April.

Useful links:

• Joint Google-Skype-Yahoo! press release (PDF/French PDF)
• Joint Internet industry position on the open Internet and safeguarding end-user access (PDF)
• Synovate study on consumer expectations of broadband
• Recent Zogby research on what mobile users want from their mobile experience
• Press release from the European Consumers' Association (BEUC) on the open Internet (PDF)

In the wake of the release of Skype 4.0 for Windows and Skype 2.8 Beta for Mac, it’s time to say thank you to the people who speak to you all the time, unnoticed, through Skype application itself. Sometimes in English, sometimes in C++ or Delphi – but have you ever wondered how Skype gets translated into your language?

Continue reading "Nobody expects the Volunteer Translators" »

At Skype, we’ve always believed that people should be free to use mobile devices without restrictions on what applications they can install, or which networks they can access. Some of you may have seen that we’re supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation in their efforts to gain an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US, which would further enable this sort of liberty.

We asked Zogby to survey around 3000 mobile users in four countries – the US, UK, Japan and Spain – over the last three months, and their research findings confirm our beliefs. Most mobile users (67%) say that they don’t have nearly as much control over their mobile devices compared to their computers, and this is reflected in the fact that the vast majority (70%) report that they’ve never downloaded an application to their mobile.

However, the same people express a strong desire to be able to choose mobile applications for themselves, rather than have their mobile networks decide for them what applications they can use. The survey results also indicate that people will pay more for a mobile device that will give them the freedom to install the software they want.

A taste of things to come

The results from Spain hint at what happens when mobile users are given more freedom. In Spain, more than half of the survey respondents (53%) felt they had as much or more control over their mobile devices than they have over their computers, and nearly half (47%) see their mobile devices as extensions of their computers. Given these attitudes, it isn’t surprising that nearly half of Spanish mobile users (48%) have downloaded applications to their devices – a much larger percentage than in the other countries we surveyed. Moreover, a much larger percentage of Spain’s mobile users – 50% – are willing to pay more for a mobile device that gives them the freedom to install what they want.

This is a clear signal to everyone in the communications industry – mobile networks, device manufacturers, and software companies like Skype – to work together to deliver what mobile users like you want: the freedom to install what you want, where you want it. For us, that means the freedom to give you Skype everywhere. Now doesn’t that sound like a deal?

Thanks also to Om, Phil and Jason Kincaid for their coverage of the research – Jason has embedded the US and international datasheets which the inquisitive among you may find interesting.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may be familiar with one of our themes for this year – focus. So why have we removed SkypeMe!?

In short, we wanted to simplify the number of status options we offer – you may have noticed that we also removed Not Available. Over the course of the 4.0 project, our research showed that users found SkypeMe! confusing. People weren’t always clear what SkypeMe! meant – that they were opening themselves up to be contacted by literally anyone.

I know that some of you come to Skype with the specific aim of finding new contacts and making new friends. We’re investigating ways of making this work without detracting from the simplicity and focus of Skype 4.0 for Windows – so please bear with us. For now, why not head over to the Coffee Corner in the Skype Community, where you can meet new people from around the world.

Jonathan Christensen is Skype’s General Manager for Audio and Video.

Today marks a significant moment in the journey of Skype. Some of you may be aware of the SILK speech codec which is included as part of Skype 4.0 for Windows – it’s what enables super-wideband audio and optimizes call quality, even in low network bandwidth environments. It transforms sound quality for Skype calls, and if you haven’t already tried 4.0, believe me: you should.

I’m speaking at eComm today, and have some very special news to bring our developer community – we’re making the SILK speech codec available for a royalty free license by third-party software and hardware developers soon.

Continue reading "SILK, our super wideband audio codec, is now available for free" »

This is the second in a two part exploration of the making of Skype 4.0 for Windows. It offers a bit of an insight into the way things work here at Skype, and gives an idea of what’s to come. If you haven’t already, you might like to start by reading part one.

First steps

The 18th of June 2008 marked the first public airing of Skype 4.0 for Windows, and the start of a very different public beta process for Skype. With previous versions of the software, we’d typically released one beta, fixed bugs, and then released a gold version a month or two later.

This time around, we decided to use the public beta to get feedback not only on bugs, but also on the new user interface. We also set out with the intention of testing the beta with a variety of users, and not just the power users who’d been representative of the vast majority of beta testers until now.

So, as well as talking about the three beta versions of Skype 4.0 for Windows on this blog, we proactively offered them to new and less experienced users, as they make up a large percentage of our total user base.

Don’t forget: to many of these new users, the idea of using their computer to make calls may have been an entirely alien concept, and so by offering them (and other new users) the beta version of 4.0 we had an opportunity to gauge reactions from a far broader sample set than we had previously – and a sample (we hope) much more representative of the Skype user base as a whole.

Continue reading "The story of 4.0: In the wild" »

This is the first in a two part exploration of the making of Skype 4.0 for Windows. It offers a bit of an insight into the way things work here at Skype, and gives an idea of what’s to come. Look out for the second part tomorrow.

The rationale for 4.0

Online communication has changed significantly over the last ten years – both in terms of the way people do it, and in terms of who’s doing it. Voice and video calling, as well as instant messaging, are now firmly in the mainstream.

Despite this, the current generation of online communication tools have remained largely unchanged since the mid-1990s. The vast majority of instant messaging software, for example, has always looked and behaved very similarly – and, until the release of Skype 4.0 for Windows, Skype was no exception.

Of course, this has been done partly with good reason – there are familiar, established user interface metaphors which make software easier to use, and which lower barriers for new users. However, through our initial research, we began to discover that the way people use software like Skype is fundamentally different to the way people used instant messaging software back in the mid-nineties.

Continue reading "The story of 4.0: Beginnings" »

Jonathan Christensen is Skype’s General Manager for Video and Audio.

Today, I’m speaking on a panel at the Open Mobile Summit, talking about ‘disruptive voice’. We’ll explore both the business and technology sides of communications innovation, and one thing I’ll raise is the issue of net neutrality. Tomorrow, my colleague Christopher Libertelli, who leads our Government Relations team in the Americas, will be speaking on a similar panel in Ottawa for the Public Policy Forum.

Some of you may be aware of our ‘wireless Carterphone’ petition to the FCC in the US (PDF). It demands that the regulatory body allow people to use any mobile device on any mobile network, free of restrictions imposed by cellphone networks. This is critically important to the future of mobile communications – without this freedom, competition will be stifled, and mobile device and connectivity prices will remain high.

More broadly, Skype supports the idea of net neutrality. Skype is opposed to unreasonable bandwidth caps and believes that unreasonable limits on use of an internet connection should be declared illegal. Of course, reasonable limits are perfectly acceptable so long as they are made clear to broadband users so that people know what they can and can’t do with their connection.

Continue reading "Skype and net neutrality" »

Over the last few days, we've heard lots of concerns and questions from you about the security and privacy of chat communications in China. I hope that my previous post helped to explain the situation in more detail. What I'd like to do now is take a moment to address some of the most common questions we are hearing directly from you, and seeing asked in discussions around the Web.

What have you learned from TOM about the uploading and storing of certain chats, and what are you doing about it?
What we have discovered in our conversations with TOM is that they in fact were required to do this by the Chinese government. It is common knowledge that censorship does exist in China and that the Chinese government has been monitoring communications in and out of the country for many years. This, in fact, is true for the most common forms of communication such as emails, fixed and mobile phone calls, and instant messaging between people within China and between China and other countries. TOM, like every other communications service provider operating in China, has an obligation to be compliant with local laws if they are to be able to operate in China at all.

What Skype can and will do is to ensure that it is clear and transparent to Skype users that their chat messages into and out of China may be monitored and stored. We are looking into a number of ways to make this more clear to our users.

Will you continue to operate in China?
Yes. Our mission is to enable the world's conversations. Nearly 1 in 6 people in the world live in China, and a great many of them rely on Skype to connect with families and friends, run businesses, and call people around the world. By and large, people in China are able to do this for free. We believe it would be unfair to deny users in China access to Skype.

Is Skype secure?
Yes. Skype-to-Skype conversations are among the most secure and private forms of communication publicly available today. In other words, the issues highlighted in recent reports do not affect any communications where all parties are using standard Skype software. They refer only to instant messaging communication in which one or more parties are using the co-branded TOM-Skype client software, distributed by TOM only in China.

You may have seen some reports in the media about a security and privacy breach in the software provided by our Chinese partner, TOM Online. I'm writing to let you know where we stand, and what we're doing to resolve the problem.

Some brief background: In China, TOM is the majority local partner in our joint venture that brings Skype functionality to Chinese citizens. The software is distributed in China by TOM and TOM, just like any other communications company in China, has established procedures to meet local laws and regulations. These regulations include the requirement to monitor and block instant messages containing certain words deemed "offensive" by the Chinese authorities.

It is common knowledge that censorship does exist in China and that the Chinese government has been monitoring communications in and out of the country for many years. This, in fact, is true for all forms of communication such as emails, fixed and mobile phone calls, and instant messaging between people within China and between China and other countries. TOM, like every other communications service provider operating in China, has an obligation to be compliant if they are to be able to operate in China at all.

In April 2006, Skype publicly disclosed that TOM operated a text filter that blocked certain words in chat messages, and it also said that if the message is found unsuitable for displaying, it is simply discarded and not displayed or transmitted anywhere. It was our understanding that it was not TOM's protocol to upload and store chat messages with certain keywords, and we are now inquiring with TOM to find out why the protocol changed.

We also learned yesterday about the existence of a security breach that made it possible for people to gain access to those stored messages on TOM's servers. We were very concerned to learn about both issues and after we urgently addressed this situation with TOM, they fixed the security breach. In addition, we are currently addressing the wider issue of the uploading and storage of certain messages with TOM.

It's important to remind everybody that the issues highlighted in yesterday's Information Warfare Monitor / ONI Asia report refer only to communications in which one or more parties are using TOM software to conduct instant messaging. It does not affect communications where all parties are using standard Skype software. Skype-to-Skype communications are, and always have been, completely secure and private.

I passionately believe in Skype's mission to enable the world's conversations. Allowing the world to communicate for free empowers and links people and communities everywhere. Our challenge is to bring this valuable service to people all over, including China, while being transparent to our users and staying within the boundaries of the local laws. We are committed to meet this challenge.

Update: Josh answers some common questions about the privacy breach.

At the opening of the Baltic Dynamics innovation conference in Tartu on the 4th September, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves spoke about the need for a society which fosters innovation: (full text)

Continue reading "Skype contributes 10% of Estonia’s R&D" »

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.

Continue reading "Happy Birthday from Howard Wolinsky" »

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:

Continue reading "Some more on Skypecasts" »

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.

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.

Continue reading "Skype's new COO Scott Durchslag speaks out " »

Hello again!

It's been 10 days since we launched the first Beta of Skype 4.0 for Windows, so I thought it would be a good idea to reflect a little and to respond to some of the feedback we've received.

Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone who has given us their thoughts via our feedback site, on this and our other blogs, but also via the various feedback mechanisms we introduced for this Beta. It always amazes me how many people are so passionate about Skype and that's what makes it so enjoyable to get up and come to work every morning (apart from last Thursday - boy, did my head hurt).

We've had very different reactions to Beta 1, in particular the big change we made of having Skype in a larger window. One of the primary reasons for doing this was that we found an overwhelming majority of people had trouble working with multiple windows and were using Skype mainly to make calls and video calls, especially amongst those new to Skype. We've had some very positive feedback from a lot of people on the new way of working, and that's encouraging as it seems we're starting to solve the problems that we set out to solve. However, it's very understandable some of you used to using Skype on a regualar basis have been a bit frustrated about not being able to work with Skype the way they are used to.

We always planned to address our more advanced users in a second beta, and I just wanted to say - don't worry -- we will address the need to have Skype take up less room on the screen with a feature that allows you to reduce the size - we call it compact mode. We hope to get it out towards the end of the summer with our second beta release.

Continue reading "10 days later..." »

This is my first post on the Skype blog, so I figured I'd introduce myself. I'm Rodrigo Madanes and I work at Skype as the Chief Product Strategist. Basically, I look at where we're taking the products.

A few months ago, I was interviewed by Bradley Jones for a book he was putting together, titled "Web 2.0 Heroes". The book consists of interviews with many figures in Web 2.0, each made into a chapter (mine was one of them). I wanted to share with you some of the things we discussed.

Continue reading "Skype's Product Strategist Rodrigo Madanes, one of 20 "Web 2.0 Heroes"" »

This week will mark the first month on the job for Skype CEO Josh Silverman. It may not be as round an anniversary as 100 days, but if you want to find out what's brewing in the mind of the man at the top, Almost Thirty Days On the Job looks like a pretty workable milestone. And it didn't even require an international logistics operation to do this interview -- being able to reel in the CEO to benefit the readers of this blog is one of the perks of an open-plan office here in Tallinn. Enjoy.

Continue reading "Interview with Skype CEO Josh Silverman" »

I came across a post by John McArthur, head of Walden Technology Partners and a recent convert to Skype. What got my imagination going was his experience with Skype (paired with a Logitech webcam) that sparked memories of his visit to the New York World's Fair in 1964. That year, AT&T demonstrated its Picturephone, an effort to add faces to the voices in a phone conversation. The concept never took off and AT&T now calls it "big, expensive, and uncomfortably intrusive."

Continue reading "Video calls more than 50 years ago" »

In our work, we run into all kinds of stories where people have put Skype to good use in their lives.

Distant lovers enjoying dinner -- and each other's company -- over a free video call. Local-government officials replacing meetings with multichats. Homesick soldiers keeping a line open with their families. There are a lot of people who use Skype religiously, but until this post today by our US blogger Howard Wolinsky, I didn't think of it in literal terms.

If you believe that missionaries tend to be hardline Luddites who eschew modern technology, Malcolm Lanham's Mercy Ministries/Global Outreach will help prove you wrong. And if you are a missionary who, Luddite or not, has been limited to handwritten letters and once-a-month phone calls, Lanham's story may help you expand your horizons a bit.

The Hollywood Reporter has done a nice story on how quick-thinking CNN tech staff in the US helped the network out of an equipment crunch by using Skype to carry a video interview.

This isn't the first time a major network has done so, as the article also points out. But it could help open the rusty floodgates. We're all used to seeing journalists in khaki-colored vests filing reports from the world's distant hotspots over the videophone, and strangely, the choppy quality of these reports does add a layer of raw believability to what is being transmitted. (Similarly, AM broadcasts to me feel more "radio-like" than the squeaky clean FM signals or the kills-bugs-dead sterility of satellite radio)

Continue reading "Skype "a good thing" for CNN" »

In his book "Yes Man," Danny Wallace tells us (among many, many other silly things) about his correspondence with Omar, "son of the murdered sultan of Oman", who needed to enlist Danny's "professionallism" in fleeing the country with 40 million bucks. A cool 10 million for Danny's troubles and it's "God's will". That's my kind of god, I tell you.

Serious officials in ill-fitting suits don't really like young sultans, presidential widows or sad princesses who need regular people like us to pull them out of a pickle. I guess they have a point.

A few days ago, however, the topic got a bit more interesting for me. That's because some generous soul is busy populating people's inboxes with what appear to be Skype lottery certificates. I mean, what's not to like about 200,000 dollars?

Continue reading "When something is too good to be true" »

A few days ago, I wrote about why Skype felt it had no choice but to recall and replace about 8,000 London-based 0207 SkypeIn numbers. Our colleagues in customer support have pulled in extra resources and are totally focused on making the transition as smooth as possible.

Hardest hit were users who had subscribed to the affected SkypeIn numbers for 12 months. (SkypeIn subscriptions are available for 3 or 12 months). We know that small businesses are among them and that their trust and confidence is a precious, fragile thing. It’s with them that we’ll have to work the hardest to win back their confidence.

So here’s where things stand at the moment. Our customer support team has been working round the clock to assist everyone affected. At the moment, they've responded to over 75 percent of those who’ve required additional support. And we hope to sort out the remaining inquiries this week. (If there are any outstanding questions, please send an email to sichange@skype.net If you'd like to explore the possibility of retaining your number outside of your Skype account, please contact GCI Telecom on sales@geonum.co.uk).

Everything is being done to keep this from happening in the future. We’re no strangers to crises and major issues like this help us learn as a business. We’ll use the knowledge wisely. Have faith in us.

Like a lot of people in the Mac community, we're excited that Mac OS X Leopard is now out in the wild. As you may have read, Skype runs into trouble when Leopard's firewall is activated. At the moment, this affects a minority of Skype users.

However, we wanted to let you know that we're embracing Apple's new security efforts. By doing so, we're continuing to ensure that Skype for Mac is the most secure internet-calling platform a Mac user can get. Our engineers are tweaking Skype for Mac and as soon as safely possible, the issue will be resolved.

In a few weeks, the fix will be included in an updated version of Skype that has a loving relationship with the Leopard firewall.

The other day Lifehacker wrote about Caffeine, a tiny 48KB piece of freeware that does just one thing: it stops my Mac from dimming the screen and falling asleep. It puts a Zzz icon in the menu bar and it functions like a light switch. To turn it on, you click it. To turn it off, you click it again. That's as basic and binary as it gets. Now, another bit of software, Jiggler, does pretty much the same thing, yet gives the user more configurable options. And weighs in at 168KB.

I'll now cherry-pick three comments by those Lifehacker readers who prefer Caffeine:
"Screw options... keep it simple," said one. "It does exactly what I want it to do with a minimum of fuss or effort," said another. "Simple, to the point," said the third.

Fast-forward to today. And to the bit that will probably frustrate a colleague or two at Skype. Jean Mercier of Skype Numerology has posted "Video in the mood? Bah!", a piece that condemns feature bloat in Skype without quite calling it that. He points to comments on this very blog which reflect a longing for a lite version of Skype.

Not everyone feels that way. "I think all of the progress and features Skype has added to its product are genius," says one user leaping to our defense. "I welcome more feature[s] that will enable me to use Skype more efficiently to render my life more productive and allow me to complete tasks faster."

Although Jean Mercier is a bit unfair when he writes, "Time to listen to the customers Skype! Most existing customers don’t like it!" -- basing such a sweeping statement on fewer than ten blog comments is a pretty big stretch -- his general observation about features vs. simplicity is a reasonable one. And I won't muddy the picture by arguing that many new features are added in response to, yes, users asking for them.

Instead, I'll state the obvious: Finding the right point on the simplicity-feature scale is a fine art mastered by few. I can imagine the fiery arguments that illuminate the room where new features are chiseled in stone. But to say that is a cop-out. We hate feature bloat, too. Question is, have we succumbed to the unspeakable? Or are these concerns premature?

As I await your comments, let me click the Zzz icon on my menu bar to keep the screen from dimming...

So you're huffin' and you're puffin'. Your blood pressure has risen to 140. Your dog is shivering under the couch. You're angry. Because you didn't do anything and then everything froze and now the webcam doesn't work and ten euros worth of Skype credit you bought still hasn't shown up. Arrggghh.

There are a few things you can do.

- Head to the Skype help pages and search the Knowledgebase

- Submit a support request and get an email response within a day or two (this may not sound incredibly impressive if you expect live help, but Skype has over 220 million registered users. Even if a teeny-weeny fraction sends a question to customer support, it's quite a load).

Bonus factoid: Skype's customer support crew is officially fluent in seven languages -- English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Japanese, and Spanish. Plus three unofficial tongues which I won't share with you. Ok, I'll give you a hint on one: Skype's largest office is in Tallinn.

But there's more. Savvy Skype users have also discovered a little gem known as Skype Forums. Once you know what it can and cannot do for you, plunge right in. There's an enormous amount of searchable knowledge there, courtesy of your fellow Skype (super)users. If you can't find an answer, you can post a new question. When that's done, look around. Perhaps you have a solution to someone else's conundrum. Posting this will brighten her day and help keep the forum community alive and kicking.

Skype Forums are not an official support channel, but believe you me: they're officially useful.

Every now and then we get an email or chat message asking us: "What's VOIP?" (or voice-over-IP, as it's also known). A very valid question and if you were to search skype.com for this term a few weeks ago then you'd come up empty handed. Because we're not keen on tech talk, fancy acronyms and buzz words. But because we already have lengthy explanation about the technology that powers Skype - P2P or peer-to-peer - then we now also have a nice little "Skype explains VOIP" page. Enjoy.

So, here I was, in my previous post, being all jetsetty and stupid about sitting on a flight to Prague and flipping through magazines in search of a Eureka moment. (You've got to admit, though, it was nowhere as bad as Tyler Brule's endless columns that appeal to people who need their dose of rare elitist cool that only radiates from articles written by a rich guy who spends his life in transoceanic levitation.)

"Business travel accounts for 65 percent of all flights within the United States," reports Katharine Mieszkowski in Salon, quoting figures from travel-research company PhoCusWright. Read the article here, it's packed with useful information about emissions related to air travel.

I'm here to state the obvious: if you can skip a flight, do it. And use Skype instead for that oh-so-important meeting. Yes, the chain of events that led to the manufacture and distribution of your PC, webcam, headset, or WiFi phone did create a negative environmental footprint. So the physical stuff that Skype needs is far from squeaky clean when you've got your green-colored glasses on. But using Skype sure beats the hell out of binge flying. Oh yessireebob.

Every once in a while, you stumble across an article that expands your horizons. (Reminds me of Stephen Wright, the comedian, who said, "Some people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths." But that's an unnecessary digression, really.)

On a recent flight, I picked up the July-August issue of Utne Reader and read an amazing article, The Big Throwdown, that they had lifted from the Believer. Apparently, Rock, Paper, Scissors is huge these days, and not just among kindergarten kids. There are league championships, serious strategic gambits, corporate sponsors and pretty girls involved.

Which then reminded me of a really cool game invented by a friend of mine who writes the Virtualities blog. He posted the instructions back in February, but it's worth introducing it here as well. Basically, it's Rock, Paper, Scissors twisted and contorted to fit the Skype age. Instead of hand gestures, you use Skype emoticons. Here are his instructions. Try it, not only is the game refreshing, but it gives a whole new purpose to Skype emoticons.

This is one of those posts that strives to inspire y'all to upgrade your version of Skype. So what is it this time? In a word: sound. The sound of music. The sound of silence. The sound of the bearded supplier in Macedonia.

There are many factors that affect the way your Skype-to-Skype call sounds. Some are beyond our reach. Others we -- and you -- can control.

With each new release, Skype's engineers improve sound and video quality. And because we've replaced our audio engine in our most recent releases -- it's now fully built in-house -- it's worth bearing in mind that you may run into some bumps when a call is placed from an older version of Skype to newer versions.

Maybe the only bumps you encounter are goosebumps. Most people won't notice a thing. But to set your mind at ease and to get the best possible call quality, it's definitely worth upgrading.

I thought of this question one day. "We have these four versions of Skype. For [Windows](http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/), [Mac OS X](http://www.skype.com/download/skype/macosx/), [Linux](http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/), and [Windows Mobile](http://www.skype.com/download/skype/mobile/). Can you run all of them _in one computer_ and have them talk to each other?"

Turns out you can, and it's not so hard these days. As computers get more powerful, we see the virtualization technology get more popular, where you can run one operating system _inside another operating system_. On Mac OS X, the [Parallels](http://www.parallels.com/en/download/desktop/) product is a popular way of doing this, and it's easy to install and get going with.

So I just created myself two virtual machines, one for Windows and one for Linux. And inside the Windows "machine", I created _another_ machine using the [Microsoft Device Emulator](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C62D54A5-183A-4A1E-A7E2-CC500ED1F19A&displaylang=en). You can use this MS emulator to run virtual Pocket PC or Smartphone devices inside Windows, and also install applications such as Skype on them.

So here's what it looked like. Click on the picture to see the annotated version and then you can also access the full-size version.

I had some trouble getting the Windows Mobile version talk to the others, and it didn't start working until I used a different Skype Name from the mobile thing. I have also tried voice -- not having the both call parties on the same computer, but just calling out from different versions. All of them work fine except the Windows Mobile version that needs to deal with double-emulated processor and there doesn't seem to be enough processing power for this.

Anyone up for getting more than four Skypes on the same picture? Let me know when you do that maybe trying with different Skype cordless/wifi phones or other gadgets.

Over the past few days, we have [seen](http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/02/07/0146245.shtml) [a](http://www.heise-security.co.uk/news/84973) [story](http://www.pagetable.com/?p=27) [circulating](http://forums.tomcoyote.org/index.php?showtopic=74921) about how Skype is reading BIOS data of your computer and what this might possibly mean. [Here's an update](http://share.skype.com/sites/security/2007/02/skype_extras_plugin_manager.html) from our Chief Security Officer Kurt Sauer on this.

Check out how Loïc Le Meur, one of France's and really Europe's best known bloggers and head of [Six Apart Europe](http://www.sixapart.com/about/offices#eu), [interviews Niklas in Davos](http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2007/01/davos07_niklas_.html). They talk about the Davos event, the Second Life phenomenon (Niklas: "I'm even having trouble with my first life so I'm not too much on Second Life") and Skype's future ("from free one-to-one calls to one-to-many and more expressive conversations"). Plus Joost, the new TV ("I'm the coach watching from the bench, not scoring the goals myself this time"; "we throw spaghetti on the wall and see what works/sticks"), and how he sees Joost vs YouTube.

The interview runs for 7:43. Watch right here or [download video in higher resolution, or just the audio as MP3, from original post](http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2007/01/davos07_niklas_.html).

Skype's brand is one of our greatest assets. We've put a lot of work and love into it. A collateral of this is that we've sometimes also made it into various [top brands lists](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2006/01/skype_is_3rd_in_a_global_brand.html). You don't hear us boasting about it every day, but it's kind of nice to know. We quite like our brand and we keep developing it.

As Skype itself keeps evolving, the brand should keep up. Maybe you've noticed that we've switched our tagline on skype.com, from "The whole world can talk for free" to "Take a deep breath". That's a sign of greater things to come. The brand team said they'll do a longer post here about the transition, but until then, here's a trailer for you in the form of an illustration. In short text form: if you're working together with Skype in any shape or form, then, as painful as it may sound, please forget about Akbar and speechbubbles. ([Akbar](http://www.wobblymusic.com/groening/akbar.html) is the "handwritten" font we often used in speechbubbles.) They may have been cute at some point, but now they're done with. Dealt. Gone. Finito.

Instead, you'll be working with... er... other stuff. For those in our partner network, your Skype contacts will tell you all you need, ask them.

And while we're working on that new post, why not check out the previous one from almost two years ago, about [how the bubbles came about in the first place](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2005/07/a_new_face.html).

Last week, we put out an [announcement](http://about.skype.com/2007/01/skype_takes_internet_communica.html) about our new pricing plans. I like to distinguish between facts and opinions. So here's a quick recap of the facts.

* As of January 18, a [connection fee of 0.039 € or equivalent](http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/rates/connection_fee.html) applies to SkypeOut calls after the fifth second, with the exception in the next two bullets.
* The connection fee does not apply if you are on the Skype Unlimited plan in the US or Canada, or Talk for Britain plan in the UK.
* The connection fee doesn't apply to toll-free calls. You can do toll-free calls without having any Skype Credit or paying anything.
* The following regions were added to our Global Rate of 0.017 € per minute: Czech Republic, Guam, Hungary, Israel, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Puerto Rico and both Alaska and Hawaii in the United States.
* We are working on our new Skype Pro offering that, among other things, will have domestic SkypeOut calling in a number of countries with a connection fee but no per-minute charges. You can [sign up to receive more info by e-mail](http://www.skype.com/products/skypepro/), and it will of course be here on the blog. No date yet, but I think it's safe to say we will speak more about Skype Pro in weeks, rather than months.
* Nothing changed in the structure of our other prices (Voicemail, SkypeIn, or free Skype-to-Skype).

Continue reading "The new pricing structure, what's next, and what to make of it all" »

We've seen reports of Skype for Mobile development being halted in light of too expensive data plans, so I checked with a few people and thought I'd put up an update on where we stand with this.

First, it's of course true that people decide to use or not use Skype and other Internet applications on their mobiles based on their data plans. The industry continues to develop and we've seen various unlimited data plans spring up in different places. The first one was with German e-plus [already in November 2005](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2005/11/skype_on_german_eplus_3g_netwo.html).

Second, I've always found "Skype for mobile" an obscure term. There is no single "mobile" platform and there is no single "Skype" that will work on all. So talking about "Skype for mobile" is like talking about "Skype for computer". On desktops, we have Windows, Mac OS X and Linux versions. Similarly, on mobiles we have had Skype for Windows Mobile for almost two years now ([announced in April 2004](http://about.skype.com/2004/04/skype_launches_skype_for_pocke.html)), and it now also supports Smartphone devices. We also have a client that works within the [Three X-series](http://www.three.co.uk/xseries/features/skype/index.omp). Similarly, we will have future versions on current and future platforms, working in different thin- and fat-client configurations. For example, Mac OS X has just entered the mobile scene with Apple's latest product announcement, and while it remains to be seen how open the platform will be to external software developers, in principle and in the long run there's no reason why you couldn't see Skype running on that thing one day.

Russell Shaw argues that headsets are the primary turf of Skype, and while devices are cool, they won't give us a big uplift.

> Skype grew up in the headset world. Skype grew big in the headset world. And maybe I am on a curmudgeon streak, but I wonder how many prospective custoers- even current Skype users- would pull out of their two-year cell contracts to mobil-ize their Skype.

Continue reading "Skype — for headsets only?" »

Many people asked us for a whiteboarding function in Skype. Whiteboarding is when you can share a common "canvas" with your friend and both draw on it. The good news is that there is now a whiteboarding function in Skype 3.0 beta. The bad news... well, what can be bad about that

Whiteboarding is not an inline core function in Skype. Rather, it's bundled as one of the many extras that you can use. I think it's one of the simplest and greatest examples of where we're trying to get to with this whole Extras thing. So I thought I'd do a quick writeup of how the extras work if you want to use an extra with your friend. We're using the whiteboard as an example here, but all the extras work and install pretty much the same.

It all starts when you right-click on your friend and select "Do More". You then see a list of the suggested extras and can organize them further if you want. For now, we just select the first one, "Draw on Sketch Pad".

Continue reading "Whiteboarding with Skype 3.0 beta" »

Firstly, a quick introduction. My name is Duncan and I’m an interaction designer here at Skype. I get to work with all kinds of interesting people, dreaming up new ways to make Skype useful, fun and usable.
Making Skype easy to use is something we take very seriously. It’s not enough to keep dreaming up cool new features, because if no one can figure them out, we’ve wasted all that hard work. So we’re constantly asking ourselves questions like: “Is this as simple as it could be?”, “Does this do what people really want to do?” “Could my hamster, Rambo use it?”

When starting work on Skype 3.0, we noticed that all the features we’ve been putting out over the last couple of years were really piling up. Great stuff like mood messages, video calling, and bookmarking useful chats so you can find them later were getting lost in the crowd of buttons and widgets. In short, we needed to do some spring cleaning.

Continue reading "A new face for 3.0" »

We now have public chats in Skype. Yay.

What are they? In short, you could say that public chats are text chats that anyone can create, host and join. They're similar to the current private text chats and indeed, share large parts of the interface, but what public chats offer are better moderation controls, letting anyone join without being "added" and letting you have a link to a chat straight on your webpage, e-mail or any other place.

There's now a public chat for this blog too. Just see in the right sidebar. Feel free to join.

Note that public chats are currently only available in Skype 3.0 Beta for Windows. Support for other platforms is coming. You cannot join public chats with older versions of Skype for Windows.

The public chat system is pretty versatile. You can have chats with wildly different policies. You can have open watercooler chats where anyone can come and talk, or you can have pressconference-style chats with lots of listeners but few talkers, or entirely closed chats where you will approve each joiner before they can even read the messages or topic. You can remove messages and remove unwanted folks from chats.

The detailed instructions for using public chats would be far too long to type here, but we have handy user guides to take you through all that. Go to our [communities page](http://www.skype.com/share/communities.html) where you will find guides for how to [create](http://www.skype.com/help/guides/publicchat_create.html), [manage](http://www.skype.com/help/guides/publicchat_manage.html) and [promote](http://www.skype.com/help/guides/publicchat_promote.html) your chat. You'll also find the Skypecasts guides on that same page. Here are just a few notes about why public chats are interesting and what has changed in the current, private chat feature.

Continue reading "Public chats and chat improvements" »

One of the concerns we hear from more active Skypers is that it is really difficult to get the sound devices in Skype right, especially if you have more than one device connected and keep switching between them. It's not really difficult to switch sound devices in Skype, you just need to go to Tools, Options, Sound Devices and select the devices you want to use. And other software does it the same way so it's what you could call an "industry standard" way to manage the devices.

However, it wasn't good enough and it often destroyed the call experience. Suppose someone calls you and you don’t have your headset plugged in. Now you need to quickly grab your headset, plug it in and click your way through the menus to find the sound settings hopefully before the other party gives up through sheer frustration of not hearing you speaking. Plus there's the uncertainty of if the device switch really works mid-call or will it hang up your call.

This is why we made what we call the Sound Settings Wizard that is now available in the place where it belongs – the call tab itself. So when you get a call, there's no longer the hassle of navigating menus and obscure options. Just click on the little headset picture and the wizard slides open, showing you the active devices and letting you change them through friendly dropdowns.

Continue reading "Skype 3.0 sound settings wizard" »

Here's a question that many of you have recently asked.

> How to add a person onto a current call or connection, to make a conference call, without having to hang up? I have a call on and want to put another on to join but I have not found how to do it without hanging up and then starting a conference call with the parties.

It's simple, once you know how. In current Skype versions, what you can do is this. Once you have a call going on, go back to your contact list and right-click on the contact you wish to add. You see a neat "Invite to conference" option. (When not in a call, you still see the option, but it's greyed out since, well, there is no call where to invite this contact.) Once you click that, this contact gets added to your call that automatically becomes a conference call. Simple. Done. And works equally fine with both Skype and SkypeOut contacts.

And I hear that in the next versions, it will be even simpler, so watch out for that.

The fine year of 2006 will be over before we know it, and we're curious as to how many Skypers out there signed up this year as a result of our free SkypeOut in North America promotion.

We'd like to hear from both Americans AND Canadians, since Canada doesn't get nearly enough Skype love. We heart our northern neighbours!! Please email your Story Guru (who actually just got back from a lovely sojourn to Montreal) by clicking here.

Someone asked us this.

> I'd be interested in turning Skype Video into a Home Watch feature. I'd like to be able to start the video remotely without the need of anybody to accept the call.

It's quite possible to use Skype and the video calling feature for this -- see the discussion in the forum.

Just a while ago, we put out some pages that quickly give you an overview of the most essential Skype features. Sometimes you may simply have a question, "so, what can this Skype thing do?". Or you may need to explain the same thing to someone who's not yet familiar with Skype. The features pages help you do that, as they're the essential collection of the most important things you need to know about the topline Skype features.

For example, did you know that...

• ... you can put Skype calls on hold?
• ... the video calls work even if only one of you in the call has a webcam and the other doesn't? Obviously, for best results and mutual enjoyment, it's best if both of you have it.
• ... the Skype chat emoticons are among the coolest and most expressive ones out there?
• ... you can see your Outlook contacts in Skype?

All this, and more, on the Skype features pages.

The SkypeCast system is fairly young, and we're always excited to hear from users who are catching on to its advantages. Enter 17-year old Josh Bolling, a Virginia resident who runs the online podcast Slash Dot Radio, a virtual discussion group based around the techie news blog Slash Dot. Along with co-host Chad Ohman (all of 14, and he took apart and rebuilt his first computer at the age of 9), Josh has begun hosting Slash Dot Radio Skypecasts, which he then records and posts online as podcasts.

Every now and then we forget that the next generation grew up on the cutting edge of technology like Skype and its precursors. I'm both proud and dismayed to realize that while I verbally and ineffectively berate my stubborn laptop, somewhere out there a self-taught 12-year old is building his own wireless network out of tin foil and spare circuit boards.

There's a fun new feature in [Skype 2.5](http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/) that got out just in time for the World Cup's hotter games. Just enter (flag:xx) into a chat message, where XX is a [two-letter ISO country code](http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html), and you'll get the image of that country's flag.

Hey, it even works in chat topics. So if you have an ongoing multichat with your friends, you can keep it up-to-date with results of the game du jour.

Jolana talks about how she found some quality problems in Skype previously, stopped using it, but is now back. This is great to hear because it reassures the work we do in each release about improving the quality of calls and the whole experience.

If you have been discouraged by Skype's quality problems previously, please give [the latest version](http://www.skype.com/go/download) another try. We keep making changes and improvements in every version regarding call, video and other features' quality. We're quite obsessed about it because we simply want to give you no less than the best possible quality. And if you have quality problems, please see our [Knowledge Base](http://support.skype.com/) and search for "quality" -- there are a lot of tips and tricks that you can do on your side to improve the quality of your voice or video call.

UPDATE: [here's another "Hello again, Skype" story](http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogtalk/wpn-58-20060602GoodbyeArea775HelloSkype.html). Two in a day -- not a bad way to wrap up the week.

Tens of thousands of SMS messages have been sent through the new Skype for Windows 2.5 BETA. But there have been some minor teething problems.

After reading comments on the SMS forum I thought it would be useful to give some background on how the system works and the kinds of issues you can expect to come across...

Continue reading "Skype SMS... what’s up with the beta?" »

A while ago, equipped my country house with a box that allows me to control
some important stuff by sending SMS messages. In fact, SMS messages are the
only way to access this gizmo. As a security measure, the box only accepts
SMS messages from pre-defined phone numbers.

With Skype 2.5, SMS message sending from Skype is made possible. All I
needed to do was to configure Skype to include phone number, instead of my
Skype name, which is default. To do that, you go to Options->SMS messages,
and tick "Show my mobile number in SMS messages I send out". Enter your
phone number, wait for verification code to arrive as SMS message, type in
the code from SMS and click Submit. There, you are all done. You can now
send messages from Skype and the receiver will not be able to tell if you
sent it from your phone or Skype.

I just turned on the floor heating of the house for weekend, and I am
pretty happy about being able to use Skype to talk not just to people, but
to machines as well!

One of the most interesting new features in Skype 2.5 is Shared Groups. If you just want to get up and running with it, there's a helpful [Shared Groups starting guide](http://www.skype.com/help/guides/sharedgroups.html) available. This guide looks at some details about why shared groups are interesting and how you can benefit from them.

Continue reading "Shared Groups in Skype" »

Good story in BusinessWeek about how to design stuff properly. We couldn't have said it better ourselves. This is how it started and got off the ground, and this is how we continue -- gradual learnings bring greatness. You never get it right the first time anyway.

> Pretend for a moment that you're a founder of Skype just beginning to design their VoIP system. Should users pay in the form of a one-time transaction, an ongoing subscription, advertising, or not at all? What would the Skype experience have been, for example, if its creators had decided to charge up front for access? How would you know? Rather than placing a big bet and swinging for the fence, proceed as design thinkers do, which is to create something quick and cheap, show it to real people, and roll the learning back into the venture.

> [reboot](http://reboot.dk/) is a community event for the practical visionaries who are at the intersection of digital technology and change all around us.

Skype's creative director Malthe [was at last year's reboot](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2005/06/reboot_report.html). Perhaps him or some other Skype folks will also be there this year. Malthe recently [posted his slides from last year](http://www.flickr.com/photos/malthe/sets/72057594101976898/). Together with the notes, they provide almost a blog-esque retrospective of where Skype was about a year ago. A lot has changed since then, but some things, like our core values and principles remain unchanged. Malthe's slides are a distillation of those and worth reiterating here.

Sometimes it's the little things that matter. Here's what someone asked me.

> Hello... I am not sure how to find my Skype In Number - I have lost it some how can you or someone give me direction?

Fortunately, this is an easy one -- just go to My Account at [www.skype.com/go/myaccount](http://www.skype.com/go/myaccount), where you will see your SkypeIn number loud and clear. A little bird tells me that next versions of Skype Client will also display this inline right on your desktop, so there won't be a need to log on to see it. But for now, My Account helps you with everything regarding SkypeIn.

A few weeks ago, we quietly put up something that is a helpful resource to all current and future Skype staff -- the new [jobs.skype.com](http://jobs.skype.com). We have brushed up the insider view section and added a [blog](http://jobs.skype.com/jobsblog.html), plus added the vacancy keywords. The [feed](http://jobs.skype.com/index.xml) contains the blog entries as well as new Insider's View posts and of course new vacancies. So if you want to see what's hot at Skype, even if you're not up for joining right away, the feed is handy to keep track of what's happening in Skype's career-land.

Read more in Riina's [welcome post](http://jobs.skype.com/2006/03/welcome.html). Oh, and be sure to check out the [movie clips](http://jobs.skype.com/movieclip.html). (There were some problems up to now for some people who were using something older than Flash 8, but it should all be fine now and they work on Flash 7 too.) We've published photos of Skype's life here and there, but I think this is the first time we publish actual footage. Check it out to see what our days look like. There's currently only a Tallinn office clip, but others are upcoming.

Shopping for a job at Skype used to be a very dull and boring experience -- very much unlike how the actual work at Skype is. We're happy this is no longer the case, as we tried to make a site which captures at least *some* of the fun and energy that's flying around here.

Continue reading "The new jobs site" »

If you visited the Skype blogs earlier today, you may have noticed that the layout was broken. Something like this.

Oops. Sorry.

Well all is good and fixed now. This happened because today, we rolled out the new navigation header and footer on skype.com. We think it makes stuff on skype.com easier to find and use. At least that's the objective. Plus it doesn't look too bad. And the sitemap thing in the footer is inspired by many other sites, not least [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com).

What do you think of the new web style? Do you agree it makes things easier to find? Or did we mess something up and could do better? Please tell us here or [in the forum](http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=47582).

Jeremy discusses "buddy list spam" (the official term is "contact list") and asks:

> What I’m not clear about is what happens once you’ve renamed a contact. Does that name stay forever, whatever the owner of that profile does to their profile name? Seems to.

Yes, when you rename a contact locally, it overrides whatever neat tricks the other person is doing with his/her name to get to the top of your contact list. Formerly, people also used to communicate a lot of other fun facts in their full name, such as their timezone and what they're up to today and all that. And when you renamed someone, you lost that info, since the locally assigned name was always used. However, with the introduction of [version 2.0](http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2005/12/skype_20_beta_free_video_calli.html), it should no longer be a problem since timezone is now a separate profile field and there's also a new "mood message" field which you can use to publish all sorts of fun stuff about yourself, but which doesn't affect your position in others' contact lists.

So when you find yourself subjected to contact list spam, just rename your contacts and be done with it. And should it ever happen that you want to revert back to the names that the contacts have set themselves, just use the "Rename" function again and clear the name you assigned -- Skype then displays the contact's own name again.

The [Skype web toolbars](http://www.skype.com/products/skypewebtoolbar/) just keep getting better. Here's a tip you might not know: you can [optimise your pages](http://www.skype.com/products/skypewebtoolbar/optimise.html) to display cool call buttons for phone numbers.

> Here are some other reasons to optimise your pages: numbers will display in the local format but be dialled internationally (if required); the toolbar will recognise numbers up to 7 times faster in IE; proper names — rather than unrecognisable phone numbers — will be displayed in ‘tool tips’.

Using this is easy -- when you're displaying a phone number on your page, you just insert some invisible metadata with the number. [This page](http://www.skype.com/products/skypewebtoolbar/optimise.html) has all the details you need.

Here's how they look if you search for "wombat" in the UK.

[Martin writes how phone notification systems should work.](http://www.telepocalypse.net/archives/000835.html) About how taxi companies notify him by a "callback", and how he wants to pick what phones ring when. Good stuff. We can only say that Skype is not done yet and these are definitely the kinds of "new frontiers" we are going to explore.

> Wanted to call my wife when I got to my parents’ house. Checked first to see if she’s on Skype. No deal, so I call. She’s out. The problem is, I’m afraid to call in case I wake up sleeping babies. We only have one landline phone sat in the study where the littlest madam sleeps in the day. But even if I had a second one plugged in and, say, in the kitchen, I can’t selectively ring just that one. So no point. Yes I could hack up all sorts of schemes to get around it, but there’s no out-of-the-box solution whereby the caller can select the nature of the ring/interruption (“sotto sotto”, please).

I often get asked "where did the Skype name come from?" A creative version was offered by one of our [forum readers](http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=33743):

> it's a Chuvash word ... meaning "The whole world can talk for free"

The truth is a bit different, but at least as interesting

Continue reading "Origin of the name/word "Skype"" »

We work with the world's most advanced technologies in audio, video, networking and other areas. At places at our offices, you can see many high-tech gadgets, many of them not seen by the market yet. Strange algorithms and datasets running across displays. So you could think we are trying to use the most expensive and bleeding-edge technology wherever you can for whatever purpose, right?

Continue reading "Our groupware" »

Something from the massive graphics archives of our pixel tweakers team, working day and night on the visual side of everything related to Skype. This is a timeline of how the Skype application icon has evolved through the past years. There may even have been more intermediate drafts, but these are the ones that have been visible to actual users. And today's version won't remain forever either -- Skype evolves, and so does the icon.

Are you one of those people who has just too many contacts and a humongous contact list on Skype? Are you having trouble finding the chat you were just in, but closed the window and now want it back? Here's a little-known feature that we find quite handy ourselves to quickly find who/what we need.

You normally use the **Address Bar** to call any Skype Name or SkypeOut number. Just type in the name or number, hit the big green Dial button and the call is placed.

Here's the trick -- the Address Bar also works as an ultralight search tool. If you start typing a name, Skype goes through your contact list and matches what you typed with the names that are in your contact list, and automatically displays a dropdown with the matches. The same is done for recent chat topics. A maximum of three choices are displayed, so if the search doesn't seem to find what you are looking for, there may have been too many matches -- just keep typing and refining your "search".

Now you can just click on one of the matches, or press the Down Arrow key and Enter. If it was a Skype or SkypeOut contact, that contact is highlighted in your contact list. If it was a chat, the chat window is opened.

The Skypiquette doesn't really exist yet. (Indicated also by the fact that the word turns up nothing in Google.) So let's create it. As etiquette describes how to behave in daily real-life social situations and netiquette does the same on the Internet/web, we can say that Skypiquette is a shared set of rules that make your and others' life and communications on Skype easier.

Here are some rules we've found useful ourselves.

Continue reading "Skypiquette" »

Skype Chat (some people call it "Instant Messaging", but doesn't "chat" sound much nicer and cleaner?) is the hidden gem of Skype. True, Skype is first and foremost about calling. But there are many times when you'd want to use text chat instead of, or together with, voice calls. So we went to great lengths to make it useful for ourselves -- there are probably thousands of Skype chats going on among the Skype staff and our friends and partners at any given time -- which hopefully means its useful and fun to you too.

There are some things in the chat feature that are not obvious, but once you get to know them, you'll love them.

Continue reading "Skype Chat tips and tricks" »

We take a look at how contact importing to Skype works. This is especially useful if you are just starting on Skype and don't yet have many friends on Skype, but have built up contact lists in your e-mail programs and Instant Messenger clients. The Skype Import Contacts feature lets you see if any of them can already be found on Skype -- maybe they started using it and just forgot to tell you? -- and if not, you can easily send an e-mail to let them know you've moved on to Skype.

Continue reading "Importing contacts" »

As you perhaps noticed when we launched share.skype.com, it looked at little different from other Skype websites. More bubbly, if you want. More bubbly, more colorful, more hand drawn.

That was on purpose. It was a prelude for a rather major shift in our design style -- a shift we recently applied to the good, old Skype.com website. And it also gave us a chance to change our main color from green to blue.

Why is that, you may ask? Or you may not, but I'm still going to pretend you did, and go ahead and answer your question.

Continue reading "A new face" »

[cottee.org](http://cottee.org/?p=163) re-posted one of [zobbo's photos from flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/zobbo/21864649/) regarding the remake of skype.com, and there was a comment by [Roger](http://www.ralsite.net/) there that caught my eye.

Heh! And there was me thinking that they just made up these endorsements!

Continue reading "Is this story for real?" »

At Skype, we do a lot of usability work. We want to make sure that Skype is easy to use for geeks as well as computer novices. The real art is trimming things down, eliminating the number of options and mouse clicks or key presses until you get to a minimum. The simpler it looks, the harder it is to get there. We're nowhere near done yet.

We keep seeing real-life examples of why this work is important. We've one sitting right in our Tallinn office kitchen: the microwave. It doesn't have anything to do with computers or Skype, but it has everything to do with making things easy to use.

Continue reading "Microwaves and user interfaces" »

Text chats have been in Skype since the very beginning. And since early this year, you can chat with multiple contacts in a group chat, in addition to one-on-one chats. Chatting is one of Skype's main features apart from calling and contact management. And we'd like to tell you of our hidden agenda of making Skype Chat an e-mail killer.

Continue reading "How we (don't) use e-mail" »

The Insight series is about some less discussed features of Skype - the program and its features, the services, as well as the people and company running the whole show. By making Skype easy to use, we often make a deliberate choice to "hide away" some advanced features, as to not distract the entry-level users.

So the Insight series will be about things that are not obvious yet may boost your productivity and also be fun to use once you know a bit of background. Since most of Skype users are on Windows, the articles as well as screenshots will be mostly Windows-specific (but we might do some special "alternative" ones once in a while), but most of the concepts are applicable to Skype on all platforms.

The first one is gonna be about Skype online status. You may think "what's there to talk? Just rightclick on the Skype icon, select Change Status and change it to anything you want and that's it?" Yes, pretty much.

There are some things, though, that are good to know beyond this.

Continue reading "Online status and Skype-Me mode" »