One very known Skype user (at least in the small Skype fanatics world) even told me privately, with sorrow in his voice: “MSN style advertising is invading Skype”.
Do they want to beat MSN? Wrong strategy! My kids (21, 19 and 17 years old) continue to use mainly MSN, although they know their father is a fanatic Skype user! It suits their needs, indeed with a lot of fancy stuff. But do they spend money on it? I am almost sure they don’t!
What Skype should have continued to do is focus on business! Because very few business men and professionals use MSN! And they are willing to spend money on professional tools!
OK, integration in the EBay platform is one way to try to catch the attention of some kind of business. But how many professionals use EBay?
Why didn’t they make some agreements or deals with some Business Virtual Networks like Ecademy or Linkedin? Or any other network of Professional adults?
Is it too late? I don’t think so.
Today i read in my (Flemish) Financial Newspaper that linkedin will open its platform to external developers and that from 2008 on users would be able to communicate with each other through internet telephony. I hope the partner is Skype, but i doubt about it!
There still is Ecademy and there are other similar networks!
4 comments:
"MSN style advertising is invading Skype": What do you mean, can you be more precise? What kind of "adversing" bothers you in Skype?
Hello Vincent,
Are you Skype Staff?
I don't know what he meant by this, i can only tell you why i agree: an example is this href=http://skypenumerology.blogspot.com/2007/04/where-is-money.html (copy the link in your browser).
But this isn't the only one: just forget to untick "help and Skype tips" and "promotions" in your Skype Settings (Alerts and Messages).
And so on, and so on ...
Yes Skype staff (but daily Skype Linux user).
Not speaking for Skype of course, but IMHO we cannot be blamed for showing what kind of other products Skype has, especially Skype phones and devices. These are not big banner ads, in general just discrete little messages "google style", and about Skype products, so they are in context.
And as you wrote yourself these messages can even be deactivated.
Thanks for confirming my suspicion Vincent: the way you asked the question, i knew the chances were quite high that you were Skype Staff.
Now, about "these messages can be deactivated" ... how many people will wander around all menus after downloading or even upgrading? And how many will deactivate? How many will stop using Skype before being aware that these annoying things can be deactivated?
I do check all the options and tools, because i am crazy ;-), and today i discovered something more, see my post tomorrow. Yes, i am very disappointed!
But thanks again for the answer!
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