Disruptive Telephony

News today out of ReadWriteWeb and The Daily What is that a "Call" button was spotted briefly inside someone's Facebook profile:

RWW goes on to speculate about whether or not this could be part of the "deep integration" between Facebook and Skype announced last September. Mike Melanson at RWW wrote this:

The move would make a lot of sense for Facebook, which has worked recently to become the center of your online communication experience. Its recent "not email" announcement debuted a form of communication that would supposedly work seamlessly between devices, so that there would be little differentiation between messaging, email and Facebook chat. Voice calling between users, whether from browser to browser, phone to browser, or browser to phone, would just make sense in creating a more seamless communication experience.

Now, there is the obvious question -

is the screenshot real?

Or are we being hoaxed? Having personally been in a situation where I received an inadvertant preview of possible new Facebook features (which sadly have yet to materialize), I'm inclined to believe that the screenshoot could be real.

The Skype Connection?

But is it connected to Skype, as RWW wonders? The "deep integration" reported by RWW in September did turn into reality in October with the release of Skype 5.0 for Windows and the integrated Facebook panel. That release allowed you to:

• see your Facebook News Feed in Skype
• post status updates that can be synced with your Skype mood message
• comment and like friends’ updates and wall posts
• call and SMS your Facebook friends on their mobile phones and landlines
• make a free Skype-to-Skype call if your Facebook friend is also a Skype contact

This brought Facebook into Skype... so why not a reciprocal exchange of bringing Skype into Facebook?

As Google continues to amass voice resources through acquisitions, there's also a certain sense to it in the battle among the giants.

But Will Facebook Users Actually USE Voice Calling?

The larger question to me is whether or not Facebook users would actually use a voice calling capability. One commenter on The Daily What story voiced an feeling I've often heard expressed:

And indeed there are many phone/voice call applications already in existence for Facebook, some of which have been around for years. Back in October I reviewed one such app, the aptly named "Facebook Telephone" (in full disclosure, created by colleagues at Voxeo Labs as a demonstration of what could be done with the Phono SDK) and way back in April 2008 I reviewed an earlier Facebook application (also using Voxeo's platform). While applications like those have certainly seen some success, it hasn't been overwhelming... and begs the question of whether people inside the walls of Facebook truly want to interact via voice.

The Key Difference

The big difference from those applications and the "Call" feature we're all speculating about right now is exactly that...

all of the previous voice services are separate applications!

In order to use the app to communication with someone else inside of Facebook, both parties have to have the application installed.

There's the first barrier... and it's a huge one. It creates friction and no matter how easy the app creator makes it to install the app, it is still one more step that the recipient has to make in order to start communicating.

Now... imagine if Facebook just made voice calling part of the fabric of Facebook? What if everyone just got this "Call" button and were able to start making calls from their computer? Without any further installations of apps?

What if Facebook extended that to their mobile versions so that you could make calls directly from inside the app to anyone else? (You already can in the iPhone app... but only if your friend has entered a mobile phone number in their profile.)

Would this make Facebook more of a communications portal for you?

Stay tuned... the global war for your eyeballs... and your voice... is only going to get more crazy in the time ahead!

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

Yesterday, the Mozilla team took the rather drastic step of adding the Skype Toolbar to their "Firefox Blocklist" so that the toolbar is disabled by default (with the user being notified and having the option to re-enable it). Mozilla's reasoning is rather straightforward:

The current shipping version of the Skype Toolbar is one of the top crashers of Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13, and was involved in almost 40,000 crashes of Firefox last week. Additionally, depending on the version of the Skype Toolbar you’re using, the methods it uses to detect and re-render phone numbers can make DOM manipulation up to 300 times slower, which drastically affects the page rendering times of a large percentage of web content served today

Yikes! If it's causing that many crashes, I completely understand their rationale.

What's interesting about this, of course, is that it shows the linkages beyond simply VoIP and communication into the larger ecosystem of applications. Here you have a web browser add-on for a communication product which is then slowing down or crashing the web browser product.

In this brave new world of Unified Communications, or whatever we want to call it, the apps are all linked together... which creates both benefits and, in this case, challenges.

I don't personally use the Skype toolbar, so I don't know how useful or not it was to people out there. It will be interesting to see how Skype responds and whether they will be fixing it soon.

---

UPDATE: Skype's PR team contacted me with an official response which is similar to what is now published on TechCrunch:

"We are working with Mozilla to ensure that there are no other compatibility issues and to optimize the Skype Toolbar for Firefox, in order to enable the convenience of making Skype calls with one click from Web pages (e.g., calling your favorite pizza place directly from a Google search result). We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused our users.

Based on our initial investigation, we know that downloading the new client will fix any compatibility issues for most users. Users can download the latest Skype client with the latest Toolbars included OR the latest toolbar installer itself is here: http://www.skype.com/intl/en/get-skype/on-your-computer/click-and-call."

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

The Financial Times is out this morning with an article about Skype CEO Tony Bates and his plan to hire around 400 more people this year. The article offers some insight into his thinking, and included this piece related to encouraging more business usage:

Mr Bates said he is considering offering the so-called Service Level Agreements that most companies require from their suppliers to assure a guaranteed quality of service, and adding new services for businesses.

The creation of SLAs would be interesting to see, given Skype's P2P nature, which I've explained previously particularly with regard to their recent outage. Not quite sure how they'd do it, unless they perhaps create a part of the P2P cloud that has Skype-operated supernodes and a version of the Skype client software that defaults to connecting to that part of the larger Skype cloud.

In any event, the FT article makes for interesting reading to get a bit of glimpse into the thoughts of Skype's new CEO.

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

Right now I looked at the bottom of my Skype window and saw that the count read 27,257,659 users online:

Not bad considering that the company just crossed over 25,000,000 back in late November and then had the massive outage at the end of December! In fact, I don't remember seeing Skype cross over the 26 million mark...

Congrats to Skype for hitting this milestone!

---

UPDATE: After Hudson Barton mentioned that the previous high number for online users was under 26 million, Neil Lindsey pointed me to the online chart of Skype users over the past 7 days, which shows that the count flirted with 26 million but did not cross it yesterday:

The 40-hour chart shows the climb in greater detail:

So Skype crossed over the 26 million mark AND the 27 million mark today! Not a bad day for Skype!

P.S. And yes, since Skype is the only source for these numbers, they could be completely making them up. However, I know (and trust) enough folks there to assume the numbers are accurate.

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

The rumors started flying this morning... and continued for quite some time... and then were finally confirmed by a Skype blog post:

Skype to acquire Qik

Qik has been around since 2006 and first came on my radar a few years back when Robert Scoble was using it heavily (he hasn't recently). At the time, though, I still had an iPhone 3G and wasn't able to use the streaming video (it worked only with the 3GS and now of course the 4) so I didn't do much myself with Qik. I was, however, very impressed with what Steve Garfield was doing with it. In particular, I remember him bringing it to some Obama events in the Boston area in the run-up to the last US Presidential election and streaming them live from his phone.

The power of live streaming from a mobile device struck me then (and still does now) as quite a powerful content creation tool.

The acquisition of Qik by Skype is somewhat curious because of course Skype already has its own video technology, but the key seems to be in this part of their blog post:

... the acquisition of Qik will help to accelerate our leadership in video by adding recording, sharing and storing capabilities to our product portfolio.

Through this acquisition, we’ll also be able to take advantage of the engineering expertise that is behind Qik’s Smart Streaming technology, which optimizes video transmission over wireless networks.

Beyond the simple video calls we can make today, we'll now add the recording and storing capabilities. Plus, Qik's linkage out to many different social networks could help Skype connect out from within its walled garden to the many other social networks out there.

On many levels it's quite a shrewd move and I look forward to seeing what comes of the integration.

For those interested, here's the video of Skype CEO Tony Bates:

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

Skype is promoting their live news conference tomorrow through a good number of channels... it will be at 10:30am PST (1:30pm US Eastern) at http://livestream.com/skype

I'm thinking it probably has something to do with... oh... video? ;-)

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

Want to discuss the Skype outage? What happened? What we know about it? Supernodes? Mega-supernodes? Skype's architecture? and more?

On this Friday, January 7, 2011, I'll be joining the VoIP Users Conference (VUC) gang to talk about Skype's outage. As host Randy Resnick writes:

Mr. Dan York, CNN VoIP celebrity, will be with us for a more geeky explanation of what happened and hopefully what the full ramifications of this will be.

Skype has had a “monopoly” in this space for a long time. Can it continue? Are there contenders, and if so, who are they? Is the free model the key to Skype’s success? Will it always be free? Will it be passed up in quality by something different (like FaceTime (or a cross platform version of it) or Google Voice?

We'll be talking about my post about Skype supernodes and much more. It should be an enjoyable time.

If you'd like to listen live, there are regular, SIP and Skype contact phone numbers to dial into the VUC. You can also jump on #vuc on IRC to join in the text backchannel.

If you can't join live, a recording of the call will be posted to the episode's web page sometime in the next few days.

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

The reaction to my last post explaining how Skype's supernodes work has been both amazing and amusing. Largely the reaction points out to me that Skype really needs to do a better job explaining their architecture... but in their absence, others of us will do so.

Anyway, one of the more fun outcomes was that I was asked to appear on a CNN UK show "Quest on Business" with host Richard Quest. Unfortunately the show was not streamed live nor was it available for viewing online later. Quite a FAIL on CNN's part, in my opinion, because the segment certainly would have been linked to by some of us. In any event, my friend James Enck in the UK captured the segment by the super high tech method of pointing his cell phone at the TV and recording the video. :-)

The irony, of course, is that we recorded the show entirely using Skype ;-)

For those who wish to view the segment, here it is:

It was fun to do and hopefully helped some more folks out there understand a bit more about Skype. (And thanks, James, for capturing it.)

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

For the first time in 3 years, Skype was down today - and as I write this is still in the process of slowly coming back online. A ton of articles were written today, mostly all pointing back to Skype's blog post or status update, which most importantly said this (I've shortened it a bit):

Some of these computers are what we call ‘supernodes’ – they act a bit like phone directories for Skype. If you want to talk to someone, and your Skype app can’t find them immediately ... your computer or phone will first try to find a supernode to figure out how to reach them.

Under normal circumstances, there are a large number of supernodes available. Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype. As Skype relies on being able to maintain contact with supernodes, it may appear offline for some of you.

Let's explain this a bit more.

Explaining Supernodes

If you go back and read my primer on the technology behind Skype and P2P networks, I described supernodes as Skype clients that are on the public Internet and NOT behind a firewall or NAT device that broker the communication between two Skype clients. In a very simplistic view, the picture looks like this:

As I note in the update section to that post, the Skype clients acting as "supernodes":

perform the somewhat limited functions of connecting nodes together, providing a distributed database and choosing appropriate nodes to act as "relay nodes" when necessary.

The supernodes are what connect invidividual Skype clients to each other and create the P2P "overlay network"... the "cloud"... that connects all Skype clients to each other.

These "supernodes" run the regular Skype software. The ONLY difference is that they are on the public Internet. So if you are running Skype on a computer - and you are NOT behind a firewall, there is a chance that your computer could become a supernode. That's just how Skype works. So there are a lot of these supernodes out on the public Internet:

Here's the thing... EVERY Skype client is connected out to a supernode. You have to be, in order to be connected to the larger directory of Skype users and for them to know how to reach you. (Note that Skype clients behind the same firewall may not be connected to the same supernode.) So it may look like this:

The supernodes are then connected to each other... creating Skype's globally distributed directory database, which in a simplified form you could think of like this:

(Skype's supernode connection algorithm is presumably more complex than the simple mesh I'm showing here... but the point is that they are connected to each other.)

Now, Skype's picture is not exactly like this. We know from the explanations of the 2007 outage that Skype uses a hybrid architecture that involves some "authentication servers" that Skype clients connect to in order to first be granted access to the Skype P2P cloud. I'm not aware of anyone publishing technical details on exactly how those authentication servers connect into the Skype infrastructure, but let's just say it looks something like this:

Skype clients need to connect to these authentication servers in order to validate their username and password, and presumably to validate their calling plan, how much money they have left in their account for calls, etc.

Now, the cool part about the "self-healing" aspect of the supernode architecture is that if a supernode goes down, Skype clients will simply attach to another supernode:

The problem with the outage today seems to be, from Skype's explanation, that a great number of supernodes went offline, tearing apart the fabric of Skype's P2P network overlay:

OOPS.

Something broke. We don't know what. Skype's blog post says only:

Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype.

What was the "problem affecting some versions of Skype"? No clue. Was it a software update that somehow affected the supernode algorithm? Did it affect the communication with clients?

No clue.

But according to Skype, that's what happened. Hopefully they will be a bit more forthcoming soon (although perhaps NOT, given their pre-IPO status), but at the moment that's all we have to go on.

My guess would be that there might also have been "cascading failures" in this scenario. If there was, say, a software update affecting some supernodes, as those supernodes dropped offline, the increased load of Skype clients trying to connect to online supernodes might have caused some of them to then drop offline. Or when a supernode came back online, it may have been overwhelmed by the quantity of connection requests and soon failed again. As I said, that's purely a guess... but you could see those kind of failures happening in a situation like this.

Skype's "Solution"

As a solution, Skype's blog post says this:

What are we doing to help? Our engineers are creating new ‘mega-supernodes’ as fast as they can, which should gradually return things to normal. This may take a few hours, and we sincerely apologise for the disruption to your conversations. Some features, like group video calling, may take longer to return to normal.

No details yet on what these "mega-supernodes" are, but some speculation is that instead of relying on individual Skype client computers to "become" supernodes, Skype is going out and setting up computers/servers specifically as supernodes. Rather than rely on potentially unstable computers, Skype goes out and gets some rock solid servers under their own control and sets those up as supernodes.

Maybe that's what a "mega-supernode" is. Maybe it's a higher level supernode... to which "regular" supernodes connect. Again under Skype's control... but providing a tighter core P2P network that houses the overall directly.

We don't know yet... but those are the kind of things Skype could be doing. Again, hopefully we'll get more details soon... although we'll have to see.

As I write this, my Skype client shows 4.5 million users online... it's the beginning of the day in Europe and I'm sure folks there are trying to get online. Hopefully Skype will be getting their network back online soon.

And hopefully we'll get some better technical explanations, too!

---

NOTE #1: It should be noted that there are other types of "servers" connected to the Skype P2P cloud beyond the authentication servers. There are also the servers and gateways used for SkypeOut and SkypeIn, gateways to mobile operators, web presence servers, etc. I left them out for the simplicity of the drawing.

NOTE #2: I am not an employee of Skype and do not have any inside information about the workings of Skype. The information in this article is based on what technical material Skype has made publicly available plus information a number of us have been gathering over the years. It may or may not be accurate.

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---

It has happened twice this morning. People calling my phone number looking to talk to someone at Skype. For quite some time now (months), I have received occasional random phone calls from people looking for Skype and when I've asked it was usually because they searched in Google and ultimately somehow came up with my number (which I publish freely here on my blogs).

This morning, though, I asked the two gentlemen who called how they got my number, and these were there responses:

"I was calling MasterCard to report a fraud and they gave me this number for Skype."

"Capital One told me to call this number." (Capital One is a US credit card issuer.)

Oops.

You see, here is the fundamental problem:

SKYPE DOES NOT LIST A SINGLE PHONE NUMBER ON THEIR WEB SITE!

Don't believe me? Visit www.skype.com and try it yourself. Find a regular PSTN phone number... I dare you to try! (And if you do, please leave a comment here!)

The closest you may get is to the "Where is Skype?" page that lists Skype's Luxembourg address and an email address, but no phone number. Their press pages have a contact form, but no phone number. (Even Skype's news releases don't have contact info.)

This is not a new issue. People have been complaining about it in the forums for years (example 1, example 2). Tom Keating wrote about this issue back in 2005 on his blog - with lots of comments from people. And today people are filling up the comments on third-party sites like ContactHelp looking for a contact number.

And apparently some people are calling me.

I've asked people in the past and it has always seemed that: 1) because I write about Skype and show up in Google search results; and 2) because I list a phone number on my blog site... because of that people in their desperation call me to reach Skype.

Now it seems some of the largest US credit card companies are helping with that. (Probably because someone there went the search route, found my number, and entered it into some database.)

So now the question is ...

what should I do?

Should I start taking the calls and invoicing Skype? How could I monetize this? Or have a bit of fun? ;-)

The good news for me is that the number they are calling is my Google Voice number and so if the calls start to come frequently (there haven't been many... but 3 now this week), I can just redirect it into an IVR application that can redirect callers looking for Skype to Skype's email address. (Gee, I know a great platform on which to write such an app :-)

At the moment I'm more amused than annoyed. Skype's a rather large company these days and it's amusing to me that they would make it so difficult for customers to interact with them that those customers wind up using the web and ultimately reaching out to little old me sitting up here in New Hampshire in my home office.

Now ask me that in a week or two if MasterCard keeps sending calls my way... :-)

Oh, wait... there's my phone... should I answer it "Thank you for calling Skype"?

P.S. And, oh, Skype... if you don't want to staff up a call center to handle customer phone inquiries, there's some really amazing technology out there that let's you have a phone number people can call you on and you can give them "self-service" options. You know, those "IVR" thingies... with many options. Lots of companies offer this technology, including, oh, my employer, Voxeo. We even let you build those self-service portals across multiple channels, like voice, SMS, IM and Twitter- and we give you all sorts of cool analytics and other integration. In fact, we even let people call into our apps using Skype, so you could set up a self-service app that could be reached from either the PSTN or Skype... and we're all SIP at the backend so we could interconnect with your backend as well. We'd be happy to talk to you about it... OUR phone number is prominently displayed on our web site... and you also know how to reach me on Skype ;-)

P.P.S. It has been pointed out to me that Skype does offer support via live chat and email if you login to their website and visit https://support.skype.com/support_selection - No phone support, though.

Flickr credit: Phil Sexton

---

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

• subscribing to my email newsletter;
• following me on Twitter; or
• subscribing to the RSS feed

---