Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Last post before bed.  Over lunch today I turned to my business partner Howard, and asked "Why would a small business ever buy an IP PBX if they could reach their customers with Skype?  Within a year or two, all you will need is a Skype-In number, and a basic Skype-enabled CRM to do business anywhere in the world."

Martin Geddes on Telepocalypse has written a long, but insightful post on the future of Skype and Ebay.  His two big predictions:

Telepocalyptic prediction #1: We’ll see a “merchant edition” of Skype within 12 months, and this will be indirectly a paid-for service to eBay sellers. Skype becomes the “PBX for micro businesses”, and it’s the seed from which eBay can grow a bigger assault on the moribund PSTN application, particularly the 800 number market. The economic driver will be increased conversion rates, larger transaction sizes, lower transaction defect rates (e.g. wrong address), and increased up-sell during closure. Only an advanced multi-modal client can achieve these things.

Telepocalyptic prediction #2: Within 18 months, Skype will be giving away ougoing PSTN calling to places with low call termination charges, in exchange for people adopting the Skype/eBay identity and proffering personal data. eBay needs to grow Skype as fast as possible to keep as much calling on-net as it can. There comes a point when your network effect means you can suddenly drop the price for a wide range of vital services to zero (think: search, browsers) in order to support an adjacent business.

Absolutely right on. 

max, originally uploaded by Alec Saunders.

Microsoft ‘Max’ was demoed at the PDC today, and is available for download. Intended as a preview of the future of Windows applications, this is a gorgeous photo organization / sharing application built on the Windows Presentation Framework (formerly known as Avalon), and Windows Communication Framework (formerly known as Indigo).  It lets you quickly and easily categorize, and then upload photos to a file sharing site to share with others.

Installation is a lengthy process.  Downloading Avalon and Indigo takes time.  For me, the process required a reboot, and then failed on restart.  I had to locate the shortcut on my desktop to continue.

Loading the software is slow.  Once loaded, the beautiful UI is not completely intuitive.  You create "lists" of photos to share with others.  Using your passport, you create an account, and then you can share the photos.

Slide shows are beautiful streamed slide shows, with large full colour images quickly rendered, even from a web site.

What’s not to like?

• Well, I mentioned the speed. I run a 2 Ghz Athlon processor with 512M of memory, and an ATI Radeon 9200 video card.  Max grinds my PC to a halt.  If this is the future of Windows, then I will be upgrading every PC in my house.
• Half of my family runs Macintosh.  How do I share photos with them?
• How do I tag photos?  The feature seems non-existant.
• Did I mention that it’s slow?

Final analysis:  Not enough meat on the bone.  It’s very pretty, but both Flickr and Picasa are more functional. 

BTW, the above screen shot is shared with Flickr.

Wendy Kennedy’s Show and Tell is so true.  Good demonstrations are invaluable.  Not wizzy powerpoint slides to show how the product works, nor staged videos of users using the product. Get in front of your audience and show them how you use the product. 

As a continuation of last nights marathon roundup of Skype / EBay stories, here are a few I missed. 

Richard Stastny pointed out that some of the best posts of yesterday came from James Enck over on EuroTelco blog.  He’s right!

Niklas and Meg 4-ever: James’ final thoughts.
Chastened?: Why didn’t the telco have the foresight to do this?
I remember Skype: Wonderful reminiscences of his first meeting with Niklas.

Richards comment was: "yesterday I was in a meeting with a majority of telco people when the message came through, and espacially the mobile operators where laughing and joking about Skype and Ebay. They still do not get the message - until it will be too late."

This was similar to Rick Segal’s in his great post titled Skype-Ebay and Today’s Lesson: "I got an email from a good friend of mine at Bell. The key line? “Well, that’s  a relief.”  Hmmm. Personally, I’d be a bit more nervous then that."

Charles Hudson, in Obligatory Skype eBay Post, writes: "What does a small online merchant struggling for respect and visibility really want and need? Probably the same thing that his/her larger counterparts have – the ability to accept payments (PayPal), a web presence (provided by eBay), and the ability to handle customer service and interact with its customers using the same channels that lots of other retailers do (the phone). I don’t believe that the Skype acquisition is really about enabling online chatting to close auctions. Have you ever been in an eBay auction? Unless it is a “Buy it Now”, most of the action happens in the last 10 minutes. What good is Skyping in that case? I would argue that Skype is most useful for those merchants who really do meaningful volume on eBay and want to be able to provide customer support or buy pay-per call advertising. Ditto on international customers who are never going to pick up a traditional landline to make an international call to close a sale or ask a question."  That was my point, here, yesterday.

Update: Another great speculation piece over on Poductivity.  In Buy my Attention: $0.02c / min. on eBay via Skype, David speculates that someday soon you will be able to sell your eyeballs to an advertiser via EBay / Skype: "… the clock starts ticking when we answer the skype call, click the "icon" on the pop-up on our screen, and appear on your screen by streaming video. You get to interact with us, tell us about your products, ask us our opinions. You’ll probably have to pre-purchase Fred’s attention, me, you’ll mostly get "on demand". Major corporations will buy attention in bulk and hold direct to consumer interactive "press conferences" with individuals in target audiences who can influence the adoption of their products. The more the marketplace knows about you, the more passive income your attention will attract, provided you fit the demographic that is. When we hang up, our Skype account is credited, yours is debited, and we have the option to cash out via PayPal. Kiss "privacy" sweet goodbye online, "publicity" is about to become profitable on SkypeBay." Fantastic, maybe?  Who knows.