100 million reasons to use Skype
 

Re: 100 million reasons to use Skype
 

One reason not to use Skype:

I dont know any of thoes 100 milion people.
(Plus my wife's eployer payes for my cell phone) :)

Re: 100 million reasons to use Skype
 

One of my colleagues loves Skype, and was so excited for it to arrive on the N800. For him, and people like him, Skype was a selling point.

Re: 100 million reasons to use Skype
 

The Lemming rationale ... always a good standby when there is nothing else noteworthy about a product.

Re: 100 million reasons to use Skype
 

Oh come on... nothing else??? The N800 is full of noteworthy aspects for many users. And simply being a Skype user, or favoring the N800 for now having Skype, does not ipso facto make a user a "lemming". That's a gross exaggeration.

Re: 100 million reasons to use Skype
 

Hm-m. I don't think we're on the same page here.

The transcript of that talk includes this:

In almost any comparison you can think of, if there are two competing technologies, one of which has visible benefits from network effects, and the other of which doesn't, the one with the visible benefits from network effects is the one that's going to win. This is not inherently evil; it's also not inherently good. It does have unambiguous benefits. The network effect provides the payoff which helps induce us as a society to make choices when we need to.

If Skype has 20 times as many users as Google Talk or Gizmo, it's way more than 20 times as useful to, um, use it. I can't think of any economic analysis that indicates rationale choice of benefits is lemming-like.

Perhaps you're mistaking me for one of those guys who camped out for 24 hours in order to buy an iPhone and two-year AT&T contract. :rolleyes:

Re: 100 million reasons to use Skype
 

I'm not arguing the conclusion nor did I say anything about the N800 not being noteworthy. Just arguing against that rationale being used to come to that conclusion that Skype is better than anything else. The "100 million reasons" argument is a logical fallacy. Just because 100 million people do something does not automatically make it a good thing to do. It is right up there with peer-pressure and mob mentality. Someone favouring something for the sole reason that everyone else is doing it is most certainly lemming mentality.

When you look at the feature-set of Skype, there is nothing noteworthy that sets it above other VoIP offerings. I have used / currently use many different VoIP systems including XMPP based using open codec (Gtalk), SIP-based using open codec (Gizmo, Ekiga, Wengophone), SIP-based using open codecs but walled garden (Vonage), proprietary protocol/codec mesh system (Skype) and mixed proprietary protocol/open codecs (Teamspeak). I can honestly say there is nothing compelling about Skype when compared to these others. It is pretty much middle of the road.

There are a number of things that make it less favourable in some respects including its "Walled Garden" community and its proprietary protocol/codec usage. People who ignore these things do not know the history of the traditional phone system and the mess it was at the beginning. Interoperability and choice of provider are good things.

Re: 100 million reasons to use Skype
 

The value of a network is indeed based on the number of interconnections. That is Metcalfe's Law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law ). This is contrary to Skype's business model of not allowing anyone but their customers to have access to their users. The problem is illustrated by the question: If you become unhappy with Skype's service, what other Skype provider will you turn to that allows you to stay connected to your network of peers?

Re: 100 million reasons to use Skype
 

For me, Skype is a pervasive reason to upgrade to the N800 from my 770. I have plenty of business contacts and I've paid for the full year outgoing for 14.95 - before the February '07 deadline in the US when it went up to 29.95 - and I rarely remember to use it because I'm starting to hate to lug around my laptop.

Skype on my internet tablet is reason enough. Sadly, it means that I'm going to have to pay through the nose for it - Nokia will get my money twice it seems.

Re: 100 million reasons to use Skype
 

Actually, it appears that you did. I just responded to your own words about a product that had little that was noteworthy.

You're taking that way, way too literally. It was obviously meant as a figure of speech, not to be deconstructed into a logical fallacy. It's hyperbole, but harmless.

As for the invocation of Metcalfe's Law, consider that Skype has ADDED to the connection possibilities. Their network restrictions take nothing away from that. So in addition to the number of Gizmo and Googletalk users, we just added another 100 million more potential N800 customers (taking the expression literally for sake of this point).

And if you're one day out of their network, so what? Your contacts don't suddenly die. You utilize a competing means of reaching them.

I'm not sure why you're getting that worked up anyway... :confused: