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Smurfs v. Skype: “We want our blue back.” « Skype Journal http://bit.ly/hFpNxR
Smurfs v. Skype: “We want our blue back.”
The Smurfs are making their case to Skypers worldwide. "We want our blue back,” said Grouchy Smurf. “Today is a day of action. We’ve gone too long without smurfalicious Online Numbers in our village. Skype should smurf it right now. ”
I came to the story when I looked at Skype and saw it had been smurfed. It was complete and utterly disruptive. I was no longer online, I was “Smurfable.” They even confused me by changing Skype’s usual Ikea-styled house into a cute mushroom home.
I checked the About Skype box and sure enough…
This looks like trouble.
My menus were all smurfed to smurf. Their day of action smurfified my contacts. It also changed my currency to $murfberries. I don’t have any $murfberries.
I tried to reach Skype.com but they were already there.
Apparently Skype’s group video calling now turns your face blue. We even have bluemoticons.
I finally figured out how to fix things in Windows.
You can reproduce my problem.
- Download smurfs.lang from Skype Journal to your desktop.
- Open Skype.
- Go to the Tools menu for Smurfs (second from the right if you use a left-to-right language)
- Pick the menu for Change language
- Select Load Skype Language File…
- Pick smurfs.lang from your desktop.
See? Smurfed.
To correct this.
- Open Skype.
- Go to the Smurfs menu (second “smurfs” from the right if you use a left-to-right language)
- Pick the menu for Change language
- Pick your language
All should be better.
I had a brief interview with Grouchy Smurf about today’s protests. He’s smurfed off that Skype TVs don’t fit into Smurf houses. “I HATE they took our blue! We want it back! Using our blue is something only Gargamel would do. Try some smurfy pink! I HATE pink! You can have it.”
I asked what he thought of Skype for Mac 5 but I can’t print what he said.
Next, the Smurfs are suing the Blue Man Group.
Is it just me, or was Wikipedia’s paywall hacked?
Can you confirm that Wikipedia’s paywall is down or hacked? If you have any clues as to how it was done or who was behind it, please email tips@SkypeJournal.com or contact me. We’re running down the story. Thanks.
Is it just me, or has Wikipedi…
Is it just me, or has Wikipedia’s #paywall gone down? Is it down for you too?
The Anticipatory Web: Tomorrow’s Tweet Today
The time frames for responding to the real-time web are so short we need new tools to beat the clock. We need The Anticipatory Web. Predictive analytics are a start but we must use available technologies to act preemptively, faster than instantly. Here’s a short talk I gave at the 2012 World Analytics Congress last April First.
View more presentations from Phil Wolff
Key points:
- The time to respond to tweets is smaller than the time it takes to see tweets.
- Let analytics blog today what you’re going to say tomorrow.
- “Tomorrow’s tweet, today”
- “Predictive Commenting”
- “Reply before the post is finished”
- “Retweet before the tweet”
- “Friend on the Forecast”
- “Predictive breakups” using analytics for timing
- “Predictive gameplay” for unfair advantages
- “Predictive voicemail” leading to preemptive message deletion.
Now is just not soon enough.
I’ll be working on this at the next Startup Weekend in San Francisco if you’d like to talk about the AW.
Did you notice Wednesday’s short Skype login and SkypeOut outage?
The brief service disruption on Skype caused by an ISP failure has been resolved. We thank you for your patience.
@Skype
Skype
I didn’t notice when Skype’s login servers and SkypeOut services went offline but several people Skyped and tweeted it at the time.
Andy Abramson can’t believe Skype’s servers don’t have the redundancy enterprise customers expect. I’m sure all hands showed up.
And yet I’m unable to see an outage in Skype’s stats showing the number of users online. I can only imagine the service interruption was short, the interruption was intermittent, it affected only a few people, or the data we’re seeing is incorrect.
Dan York wants transparency in the form of prompt, ongoing, and more explanatory communication.
I agree with Dan. Skype’s Heartbeat reports could have been much more specific.
- What exactly is the problem?
- What are the symptoms?
- Does it apply to everyone?
- How can I tell if it affects me?
- What caused the problem?
- What should users do?
- How long might this continue?
- Why do you think it happened? (I’m hoping for ninjas).
- How is Skype responding?
And an after-action report, summing things up.
So, what really happened, Skype?
Months pass, and fury over Skype 5 for Mac still boils
Lukas Mathis says the new Skype for Mac is too complicated for casual users and not flexible enough for advanced users. His head is blogging what his heart knows: revulsion and alienation over the experience.
Skype’s Mac forum has been full of kvetching, frustration and despair. Alexia Tsotsis’ TechCrunch thread concurs, after Alexia threw in a sweet mockup for contrast. Designers (Davide Casali, Free Reyes, Iiro Jäppinen, Vasjen Katro, Florian Pichler, Pritthish Chakraborty, James Scott, Craig Philips) are tweaking Photoshopped concept art, yearning for a better Skype for Mac.
How did this happen?
Over on Quora, Hugo Ahlberg points to UX team 80/20 Group’s contribution to the new design. From their site:
Millions of people use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files. 80/20 worked with Skype to transform the user experience of its products, starting with the popular Mac client.
OVERVIEW
Skype’s Mac application was beginning to show its age as it packed in an ever-growing number of features. As a result, users were having a difficult time understanding and using the full breadth of its capabilities. Additionally, Skype saw the need to consolidate its product development efforts and drive user experience consistency across platforms. 80/20 worked with Skype on a ground-up redesign of its Mac client, which would set the stage for unification across its product lineup.
So the brief was to fix feature bloat, leaving room for future bloat. Oh, and to save on programming time by having one body of code/design.
SOLUTION
User testing and audits of the Mac client highlighted issues with window management, contact management and revealed that features didn’t have enough real estate to be articulated effectively. The new single-window design improves work flows between calling and messaging while supporting the common behavior of using the “call log” to initiate communication.
The cramped design didn’t offer enough screen space for all those features.
RESULT
The next-generation user experience for Skype Mac increases use of core features while providing a clean slate for growth. The success of the redesign is seen not only in the Mac client itself but in the design’s ability scale to touch-screen devices and beyond.
So:
- More pixels per feature.
- No features subtracted.
- One-window to hold everything.
- And a happy client.
Design is hard.
Harder still when you strive to run on every operating system, in every device, with all your features. You want to be true to the nuances that make a Mac app feel like it is native to the Mac. To Android like it was born there.
Yet those many flavors slow Skype’s time-to-market.
How do you hold fast to your core Skypiness, to what made people love you, and support new features for new markets, new use cases, new business models? Your backlogs overflow. The pressure is intense. Heck, I add to my Skype wishlist daily so I can only imagine what your iceboxes look like.
The tension between simple and power is killing you.
I know this. You know this. Everyone at Skype knows this.
The shrieks from Apple users? That’s the anguish of the stricken, losing their love for the Mac-like spare brilliance of their beloved 2.8 client. They forget they’ve been calling for feature and release parity with Windows users for years. Skype gave in to feature creep and bought in to a universal design for desktops, perhaps for tablets and mobiles too.
So here we are.
Seething.
Hoping.
Please see this moment as opportunity. 
Take bold risks. Forget our gripes and take us someplace new in a way we hadn’t imagined that makes our hearts swell with pride.
Believe today’s minimalism pays later. You want a diverse developer ecosystem, yes? All those use cases cluttering your inbox? Leave those to third-parties. Let them build upon your ruthless simplicity.
Reconsider fundamental assumptions of what it means to Skype, to be Skype, to belong to Skype, to play Skype, to have Skype. The last seven years are merely prelude.
photo credits: cc-by siddharth vishwanathan (pic), Alberto Ortiz (pic).
Time for the annual Skype dialtone growth slump
The last and first quarters of the year show seasonal growth spurts in the number of people signed in to Skype. Just marking when the number of concurrent users crosses a new high-water mark, like it did at 30 million users yesterday, you can see the growth slow as Spring comes to the northern hemisphere.
Skype spoke to seasonality in its 2010 S-1 report:
Concerned that seasonality may become more noticeable…
“Our rapid growth may have overshadowed whatever seasonal factors might have influenced our business to date.”
On seasonality’s effect on profits [emphasis is mine]:
“Our net revenues exhibits seasonality because many of our users reduce their use of our products with the onset of good weather during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer months and our users tend to use our products more in the fourth quarter during the holiday season resulting in weaker net revenue growth during the second and third quarter of the year. Furthermore, we experience significant spikes in the use of our products during significant world events, such as Christmas and the Chinese New Year, or regional events, such as the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland. Due to our high revenue growth rate, the timing of product launches and movements in foreign exchange rates, the seasonality trends are not substantial when reviewing our quarter over quarter results since January 2008.”
I’m only looking at Skype’s dialtone, the people who show to call or be called. Skype hasn’t said much more on other elements of seasonality affecting usage or income. I’m sure investors would want to know:
- North/South. Is the seasonal behavior consistent between hemispheres? Does South America slow down as North America speeds up? Are there opportunities for offsetting some seasonality as Skype grows in Africa, southern Asia, and Oceania?
- Are other indicators seasonal? Logging in and revenue seem to be seasonal. What about adding contacts, call frequency (do I call more often), call duration (are my calls longer or shorter), call size (are more people in my calls), call mode mix (are more of my calls video)?
- Is workplace Skyping also seasonal? Does it vary by industry? By occupation? By country? Where is enterprise seasonality stronger or milder than consumer seasonality?
- Does seasonality vary by age? Gender? Income?
- Does product commitment moderate or accentuate seasonality? Do active users with many Skype contacts and many conversations demonstrate the same seasonal ups and downs as newbies with just a few close contacts?
- Does Skype on mobile phones dampen seasonality? When you don’t need to go to a landline, are you more likely to stay connected to the network? Has Qik experienced the same seasonality over its last five years?
- How similar are Skype’s patterns to seasonality experienced by other companies and industries?
Are you North Americans and Europeans slacking off on your Skyping as the weather clears up?
Aaytch launched a Skype for Mac support chat room
Hudson Barton invites you to join the Skype for Mac chat (Skype required) on behalf of his Aaytch software development firm. “We decided to concentrate on support for Mac Skype. The new channel, which is a Skype group chat, will be completely about Skype for Mac, and mostly about the new version 5.x.” This is ongoing and the talk runs to tips, bugs, reviews, and add-ons.
Do you want speech recognition to control your mobile Skype?
The rumor mill: We should expect voice control technologies in iOS 5. More generally, should I be able to control Skype through speech? “Skype, call Rango.” “Skype, answer the call.” “Skype, call Paul at noon.” “Skype, text to George Let’s talk this afternoon.” “Skype, who is near me?” Hands-free is not just safe for driving and easy on the carpal tunnel; talking to machines is becoming a more common user interface.
Should Skype follow Netflix, let users downshift video quality?
More ISPs now charge fortunes for blowing your bandwidth cap. Netflix.ca now lets you choose a lower quality video stream for one-third the bandwidth consumption. While Skype automatically adjusts your quality to fit available CPU, bandwidth, and connectivity, would it make sense to offer a bandwidth-conserving user preference for lower resolution video?
New high water mark: 30 million Skype users online
We have a new high: 30 million people logged into Skype at the same time. I’d guess this puts the number of active Skype users about 180 million, since most people turn off Skype at night and don’t log in every day.
Dialtone is one measure of the size and capacity of a network. Your chances of finding the people you want to talk or work with rise as more people join and use the network.
Quora: Skype’s success factors?
Swaraj Sarkar asked me:
Which of the following factors are responsible for Skype’s Success?
- Constant improvement of Product quality.
- Regularly updating the product mix.
- Product promotion through various forms of media.
- Customer support
- Advent of Social Networking
- Growth through word of mouth
- Not using the concept of trial version
If there are any other factors, Can you please mention?
Why limit yourself to such a short list that’s exclusively from the world of marketing?
You could go with:
- R&D that extended Skype into hundreds of different operating systems and devices,
- staffing strategies that sourced talent all over Europe,
- partner and alliance programs that brought in millions of new customers,
- careful pricing designs that made Skype’s services easier to understand and buy than the competition,
- community engagement that produced localization of the desktop clients far sooner in their lives than most products receive,
- usability testing and design that made the product increasingly easy for newbies to adopt,
or a dozen other non-marketing internal factors.
Consider that Skype was blessed/lucky with being in the right place at the right time with the right teams/products to exploit:
- explosions in bandwidth availability,
- high landline prices,
- higher international roaming prices even within the European Union,
- the rise of mobile broadband and smartphones,
- plummeting costs of PSTN termination,
- telephone companies unable to understand and respond to Over The Top competitors,
- no Internet companies prepared to fight for Skype’s market, and
- an increasingly long list of communities in diaspora who need international calling to connect families across borders.
Those were external factors for success, outside of Skype’s control.
On the marketing side, Skype spent a pittance on marketing communications. They’ve invested in their brand, experiments in new media, and focused their marcom on media relations and being responsive to blogs, tweets, and other social media.
Perhaps the biggest success factor was Skype’s freemium model. If you want to talk to friends, family, coworkers, or customers for free, you force them to download Skype. This isn’t word-of-mouth; this is download-Skype-right-now-or-you’re-going-to-cost-me-money-and-that-wouldn’t-be-a-nice-thing-to-do-to-someone-you-know-and-maybe-we-should-talk-less coercion. Hundreds of millions of people brought in hundreds of millions of others. This is business model design grounded in consumer behavior, more than product or technology or other promotional strategies. So credit the founders with great timing and a keen alignment of consumer incentives with network value.
photo: cc-by Alosh Bennett.