Why Microsoft’s Skype purchase means a Face-off with Apple’s Facetime

Microsoft’s purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion in cash is a massive bet for the tech giant.

Although it look like it may well have over-paid by $4.5 billion, and bid against companies who weren’t seriously in the running (Google and Facebook), owning Skype means Microsoft has a much better positioning in mobile.

But that’s not all.

The implications of this deal for Facebook are actually far more interesting. Since Microsoft is an investor in Facebook, the latter will now have deep access to its investor’s assets.

Being able to Skype from within Facebook means Mark Zuckerberg will not have to build his own VOIP communications platform – a seriously complex affair for 600 million users. Plus, the social network already has tie-ins with Skype.

But it also means both Microsoft and Facebook now have a stick with which to beat Apple and its emerging comms platform, Facetime.

With Facebook integration Skype will not be so heavily linked to an actual device – as Facetime is with Apple devices. Note that Microsoft has pledged to “continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms”.

This means Apple is going to have to really pull of the stops on its communications strategy. Perhaps that’s what the new server farm is for?

via eu.techcrunch.com

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Spock as Social Network Glue

Last week I wrote about how I stumbled upon a powerful social networking combination. Rather than thinking about which service should I be choosing I realized that a trio of new services make a powerful complimentary combination: LinkedIn + Plaxo + Spock.

Spock has become a great resource for finding people. I find it so useful I actually created a Plug-in for the Mac OS X Address Book. With this plug-in I can click on a person's email address label and choose an option from the context menu to lookup the email address on Spock.

If you would like a copy of this little utility go to http://www.ekive.com/spock/getscript.html

Let me know if you find it useful.

The Christmas and New Year period is a time to reach out to family and friends. To help me do this I turned to Shape Services and their IM+ web service for iPhone and Skype users - s4iphone.com . This neat web application allows you to log in to Skype and using SkypeOut place calls to any phone number. This is great for making inexpensive international calls. The service works by prompting you for a number at which to call you. The service then places two outbound calls. One to whoever you want to call and the other back to the phone number you nominated. This could be your cellphone or a landline phone you have access to. The two calls are then connected. This is a cool service. You can pay $4.95 per month to use the service or buy a perpetual license for $25.00. You also need to buy SkypeOut credits from the Skype Store USA. This is a really useful service and well worth checking out if you have an iPhone.

The IM+ Service is set to become even easier to use with the rumor that the next release of firmware for the iPhone will allow sites to be bookmarked and added to the main menu screen. GearLive has the scoop in a video showing off some of the features coming in the forthcoming firmware release. We can expect to see the firmware launched around MacWorld.