Skype is not Only VOIP: It Reigns in IM But How Long?
Technology October 19th, 2009
Nowadays the only context we hear about Skype is the legal fight (care to bet how long it will take for the previous Net Celebs to become the Hated Greedy Ones who try to sc**w all of us?) – I would much rather read about new features, improvements.
After all, Skype is the single most popular voice and video calling application. But let’s not forget it’s also an IM system – in fact as this Infoworld article points out, it has become the reigning IM system.
And therein lies the rub: it is less and less suitable for text chat.
The Skype Downgrade Experience
Collaboration, Personal Productivity October 1st, 2008
First, kudos to Skype for listening to customers, many of whom considered the first Skype 4.0 beta’s full-screen a deal-breaker. Yes, they listened and gave us a compact view, somewhat similar to good old 3.x, which is why I installed it in the first place, but after an hour or so I am ready to uninstall.
In a nutshell: the new Skype is great for single-channel communication, long video calls with one person, but if you’re a multi-tasker (aren’t we all?) who usually has several chat windows open at a time, you’ll be disappointed.
Read more…
Tags: beta, chat, communication, IM, instant messaging, multichannel, multitasking, skype, skype beta, trillian, video chat, videophone, voip
Email is Still Not Dead, and Won’t Be For a While
Collaboration, Personal Productivity September 17th, 2008
I can’t believe the email is dead theme, popped up again, this time on SocialMediaToday, originally on OnlineMarketerBlog.  I responded in detail on CloudAve.
Image credit: CrunchGear.
Tags: Collaboration, email, facebook, IM, online documents, SMS, Twitter, wiki, wikis
Email is Not in Danger, Thank You
Collaboration, Personal Productivity July 2nd, 2008
Yet-another-email-is-dead (OK, just in danger) article, this time by Alex Iskold @ ReadWriteWeb. Alex adds Twitter’s increasing popularity to the standard “reusable” arguments: teenagers using IM, or increasingly SMS, and most recently Facebook instead of email which they find cumbersome, slow and unreliable – hence email usage will decline.
I beg to disagree as I did before, and before. Sure, I also get frustrated by the occasional rapid-fire exchange of one-line emails when by the 15th round we both realize the conversation should have started on IM. Most of teenagers’ interaction is social, immediate, and SMS works perfectly well in those situations. However, we all enter business, get a job..etc sooner or later, like it or not…
Our communication style changes along with that – often requiring a build-up of logical structure, sequence, or simply a written record of facts, and email is vital for this type of communication. As much fun Twitter may be, I rarely have (or see) serious ongoing discussions there – in other words Tweets are in addition, instead of email.
Email in business is being “attacked” from another direction though: for project teams, planning activity, collaboratively designing a document, staging an event… etc email is a real wasteful medium. Or should I say, it’s the perfect place for information to get buried. This type of communication is most effective using a wiki, or an increasing number of online tools supporting native collaboration. Yesterday I reviewed a startup CEO’s ppt deck, and it took us 4 rounds of emailed versions of the same presentation – it would have been a lot easier to collaborate on just one “master” presentation in Zoho Show.
So yes, I agree with Alex, even in business we’re offloading stuff off email. But email is far from dead, or even in danger, and it won’t be any time soon. We just have to learn to use the right tool in the right situation. As usual, Rod Boothby says it better in a single chart:
Rod’s chart is almost two years old, but still valid – perhaps I would update it to say “Wiki and collaborative documents”. My own post here is a slightly updated version of an older one from last year, which in turn was an almost verbatim reprint of another one from July 2006. I rarely re-post old stuff, but in this case I felt it still made a valid point. Next year, when someone brings up the “is email dead?” question, I’ll dust it off again. 
Tags: Collaboration, email, facebook, IM, online documents, SMS, Twitter, wiki, wikis, zoho show
Email is Still Not Dead
Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, Social Networking November 15th, 2007
Yet-another-email-is-dead-article, this time on Slate. It’s the same old argument: teenagers using IM, or increasingly SMS, and most recently Facebook instead of email which they find cumbersome, slow and unreliable – hence email usage will decline.
I beg to disagree. Sure, I also get frustrated by the occasional rapid-fire exchange of one-line emails when by the 15th round we both realize the conversation should have started on IM. Most of teenagers’ interaction is social, immediate, and SMS works perfectly well in those situations. However, we all enter business, get a job..etc sooner or later, like it or not… Our communication style changes along with that – often requiring a build-up of logical structure, sequence, or simply a written record of facts, and email is vital for this type of communication.
Email in business is being “attacked” from another direction though: for project teams, planning activity, collaboratively designing a document, staging an event… etc email is a real wasteful medium. Or should I say, it’s the perfect place for information to get buried. This type of communication is most effective using a wiki. No, email is not dead, and it won’t be any time soon. But we all have to learn to use the right tool in the right situation. As usual, Rod Boothby says it better in a single chart:
(The above post is an almost verbatim reprint of an older one from July 2006. I rarely re-post old stuff, but in this case I felt it was still a valid point. And it still will be, next year when someone declares email dead again. )
Zoli Erdos
