Tag: communication

Report: 7 Trillion SMS Messages Will Be Sent in 2011

ABI Research, which released a study on Mobile Messaging Services, is saying that over seven trillion SMS messages will be sent in 2011. That’s worldwide, from about 4.2 billion mobile subscriptions.

ABI says SMS is being increasingly regarded as something of a commodity by users, due to falling delivery costs and high competition.

Industry analyst Aapo Markkanen says, "When these trends towards commoditization are combined with the wider adoption of mobile email and IM services, the revenue proportion of SMS and MMS against the market total is expected to decline."

Markkanen adds that email has the advantage of familiarity for many consumers, and that "Due to relatively low PC penetration in emerging regions, for many consumers across Latin America, Africa, and south Asia mobile devices will provide the primary screen for accessing email. This won’t be restricted to smartphones: many companies are developing solutions to allow more basic handsets to handle email."

ABI notes that the rate of mobile phone adoption will gradually decline over the next five years, and growth in number of new customers starting to use messaging will slow along with it. The firm also points out that SMS messaging is more prevalent among younger mobile subscribers and use of this channel will get a further boost from the younger subscribers replacing ones.

ABI says it believes that the future of mobile messaging will increasingly be in "unified toolkits that mash up and converge text and multimedia messages, IM chats, emails and voicemails." Facebook’s recently announced social inbox certainly comes to mind.

You can find ABI’s study here.

December 29, 2010
Skype Talks Outage and Prevention of Future Outages

Last week, millions of Skype users lost their connections and experienced various other issues with the service. Though the outage didn’t last much longer than a day, the sheer number of those affected created a huge blunder for the company.

It didn’t take long for Skype to go on damage control mode, however. CEO Tony Bates himself jumped on the Skype blog a few times to provide updates, explanations, and of course apologies:

Now, Skype CIO Lars Rabbe has chimed in with a "post-mortem on the Skype outage". He details the cause of the failure, how they recovered the service, and most importantly, what the company is doing to prevent such a thing from happening again.

If you’re interested in the technical explanation of what happened, simply refer to Rabbe’s post. To put it in the simplest possible terms, which he did, in the intro, Skype’s P2P network became unstable and suffered a "critical failure."

As far as prevention, Rabbe says the company will continue to examine its software for potential issues, and provide "hotfixes" where appropriate, either for download or automatic delivery to users. "We will also be reviewing our processes for providing ‘automatic’ updates to our users so that we can help keep everyone on the latest Skype software," he says. "We believe these measures will reduce the possibility of this type of failure occurring again."

"Second, we are learning the lessons we can from this incident and reviewing our processes and procedures, looking in particular for ways in which we can detect problems more quickly to potentially avoid such outages altogether, and ways to recover the system more rapidly after a failure," he adds. "Third, while our Windows v5 software release was subject to extensive internal testing and months of Beta testing with hundreds of thousands of users, we will be reviewing our testing processes to determine better ways of detecting and avoiding bugs which could affect the system."

He says that Skype will also continue to invest in capacity and resilience, with an investment program already in existence.

December 29, 2010
Millions Lose Their Skype Connections [Updated]

Update 3: Now CEO Tony Bates has provided further explanation and apologies.

Update 2: Parkes provided another update on the issue today:

An update on the downtime which has been affecting many of you around the world: the ability of one Skype user to find another relies on what we call ‘supernodes’, and yesterday, a number of these failed due to a software issue, which we’ve now identified. Our engineers are working to resolve the problem.

Millions of you are already reporting that you can now sign in to Skype normally, and we estimate that there are already almost 5 million people online. As a guide, this is around 30% of what we’d expect at this time of day – and that number is increasing all the time. Unfortunately, it’s not possible for us to predict on an individual level when you’ll be able to sign in again, and we thank you for your patience in the meantime.

It’s worth noting that our enterprise product, Skype Connect, is working normally, though Skype Manager and our other web-based functions will continue to stay offline for a little longer. Additionally, features like group video calling will take longer to return to normal.

Update: Parkes says on the official Skype blog:

Skype isn’t a network like a conventional phone or IM network – instead, it relies on millions of individual connections between computers and phones to keep things up and running. 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 (for example, because they’re connecting from a different location or from a different device) 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.

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.

Original Article: Skype has been having troubles with sign-ins today, and millions of people have lost their connections on the service. Little is known about the cause of all of this, but just do a Twitter search for Skype and you’ll see that a lot of people are less than thrilled.

Skype is on it, at least. The company posted the following tweets on Twitter:

Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype – we’re investigating, and we’re sorry for the disruption to your conversationsless than a minute ago via CoTweetSkype
Skype

Our engineers and site operations team are working non-stop to get things back to normal – thanks for your continued patienceless than a minute ago via CoTweetSkype
Skype

Peter Parkes with Skype’s communications team told ReadWriteWeb, "If you’re already signed in, you should be able to continue using Skype as normal."

Some people are apparently able to sign in to the service, but have lost their contacts.

The outage has already caused a big blow to Skype’s reputation. Influential tech blogger Om Malik notes, "The outage comes at a time when Skype is starting to ask larger corporations for their business. If I am a big business, I would be extremely cautious about adopting Skype for business, especially in the light of this current outage."

There have been a lot of high profile outages lately. Some have laste longer than others. It will be interesting to see how Skype handles the damage control with this one.

December 23, 2010
Microsoft Makes Email Content Dynamic With Active Views in Hotmail

Microsoft has some interesting news out for Hotmail users. The company has partnered with some other companies to bring a new kind of email to the inbox – one that is as up to date as possible, and lets users interact with sites from within the email itself.

While email is widely considered to still be one of the best marketing tools, and is still a huge part of how people communicate every day, it does have its limitations. Microsoft is hoping to solve some of these limitations with its Active Views platform. Those taking advantage of the platform will be able to deliver users email that stays fresh.

Microsoft’s Dick Craddock explains, "One challenge is that the content [of general email] is static, so when you open the email, the content may already be out of date. Additionally, most of these messages require you to click out of them to the sender’s website in order to complete a key action or take the next step. In some cases, this works just fine, but it can become a hassle, especially if you’re trying to get through your inbox quickly. You might want to check out that online deal, update your account, respond to a friend request, or browse products, but simply don’t because of the extra time it requires. With the average person receiving more than 200 email messages per week (outside of work), the extra time adds up, and our research shows that about 70% of people who use email regularly think that getting through their inbox takes too long."

Enter Active Views’ features that let users interact from inside the email itself.

"These enhancements haven’t happened before today due to security concerns by email services," explains Craddock. "There has simply been no way to run JavaScript code within email messages in such a way that it’s isolated and not allowed to do malicious things on your computer. Hotmail is solving this problem with its new Active Views platform, technology that allows senders to run code securely in their email messages. It protects you AND gives you access to information on the sender’s website through forms and inline actions built directly into the email itself. This keeps the content up to date and provides a more engaging and time-saving experience."

Monster.com and Orbitz are the first to partner with Microsoft on the initiative. Users will be able to book travel arrangements and look for jobs from within the emails. Microsoft suggests things like managing your Netflix account or accepting LinkedIn invitations from within an email as future possibilities.

December 16, 2010
Wake Up Call to Email Marketers

Several months ago, Google launched Gmail Priority Inbox. It was very well received. "Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the ‘spam’ folder," explained Google software engineer Doug Aberdeen upon the product’s release. "But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important…"

The point of the Priority Inbox is to place priority on the "more important" messages. For those who have been using it, it would appear that a lot of time is being saved.

"Since then, we’ve heard from a number of you who’ve found it helpful in combating information overload, and we’ve seen evidence of this in aggregate too," says Engineering Manager Pal Takacsi-Nagy. "Looking at median time in conversation view, we noticed that typical Priority Inbox users spend 43% more time reading important mail compared to unimportant, and 15% less time reading email overall as compared to Gmail users who don’t use Priority Inbox."

Google is now providing users with more information about how it determines the importance of emails in Priority Inbox. Now when users hover over the "importance marker" they’ll see an explanation.

Google says it has also made the feature more responsive to manual corrections. This means the system will supposedly learn more quickly about user priority preferences as the user manually indicates them.

As it stands right now, users must activate Priority Inbox under Settings within Gmail. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a standard default feature of the service in the future. Facebook recently launched its own new messaging system, which employs similar principles in filtering/prioritizing messages it deems more important.

While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg flat out said that his new product wasn’t a Gmail killer, others believe Gmail should indeed be worried. If Google feels threatened enough by Facebook’s service, it could very well implement Priority Inbox as a default feature so more users realize the similarities. Of course that’s not all there is to Facebook’s product, which brings in email, text messages, and Facebook messages into a single inbox.

One question that remains is how this shift to email prioritizing will affect email marketers and those providing legitimate opt-in email messages to users (newsletters, deals, etc.). As far as Facebook’s product, I’ve speculated that we may see a shift in businesses utilizing personal profiles more to actually become "friends" with customers and get into the highest-priority inbox. This would be easier said than done, because it would involve really becoming engaged with customers (which is what social media marketing is supposed to be all about anyway). That means more conversation and less one-way messaging. It also means authenticity.

As far as Gmail’s Priority Inbox goes, news of increased explanation and quick learning of user preferences could actually help legitimate email marketers, newsletter publishers, etc. Users want to receive these messages. That’s why they opted in. If the system better understands this, and users better understand how to make the system realize this, opens could increase. It should be noted that users should still receive the messages regardless, but if they’re not prioritized, they could get buried among other messages, depending on how much email users get.

That said, it’s going to take providing great content to keep users wanting to receive such messages. This has always been the case, but this should be considered a wake up call to email marketers. If the content isn’t quality, why would users wish to prioritize it?

You can likely expect more and more email services to offer similar features as Internet users continue to look for ways to organize an increasing amount of content consumption.

On another email-related note, Mozilla Labs has announced an early-stage Gmail-like conversations view for Thunderbird.

December 7, 2010
Subtle Facebook Message to Users Sends Big Message to Google

When you get on the web, where is the first place you go? If you regularly close your browser, it’s whatever you have your home page set as. Is the page the destination of the majority of your online activity? If so, there’s a good chance you have Facebook set as your home page. Maybe it’s Google or Yahoo or Bing.

Whatever it is, Facebook appears to be getting ready to make a big push to get users to switch their home pages to Facebook. The company is reportedly testing different messages for users, encouraging them to do so. Many of Facebook’s half a billion users are constantly logged into the site, and enhancing their experiences on many other sites on the web as a result already, so it stands to reason that many of these same users will take Facebook up on its offer, and just make the site their starting point.

Should Google be worried? Tell us what you think.

People are already spending a great deal of their time on Facebook. Some check their Facebook inbox, wall, or news feed before they check their email. Now with Facebook’s new messaging system and email addresses, even more will go to Facebook first. If the messaging stuff could be considered an assault on Google, this subtle move certainly could be as well.

I don’t have a number for how many people have Google set as their home page, but I’m guessing it’s a pretty big one. It’s about to get smaller. Facebook’s only going to give people more and more reasons to keep Facebook as their entry to the web as well. Wait until Facebook payments become a standard way of making payments around the web, as they are likely to do eventually.

Don’t be surprised if Google starts doing more to promote iGoogle, its customizable homepage, to stay in the forefront of users’ minds. They’re already doing more to promote Chrome, the company’s web browser, which is looking to be more and more a key component of Google’s overall strategy. What would happen if Facebook launched its own browser though? Rockmelt has essentially already done it for them (via Google’s own open source Chromium platform), but if Facebook promoted its own browser right from Facebook itself, that could be an incredible blow to Google as well.

You might say Facebook doesn’t need to own the browser, because its presence is felt nearly everywhere on the web anyway, but if Facebook were able to phase Chrome out of users’ experiences, that’s one less weapon Google has in competing for user attention.

But a lot of users’ web experience starts with search right? Well, Facebook is pretty tight with Bing. If Facebook were to launch its own browser, I wonder what the default web search option would be. Facebook has so far not indicated that it will launch a browser, but it is encouraging users to set Facebook as their home page, and Bing is the default web search there. Here, it’s going to be the on-page search competing with the browser search box (as well as Chrome’s omni-box). Bing might see a bump in search market share from this as well. The fact that users already have ways to search from their browser toolbars also decreases the need to have a search engine as a home page.

The bottom line is that Facebook users have a lot of reasons to set Facebook as their home page. Their friends and family are there. Their messages are there. Their news feed (from friends, as well as any brand/publications they "like") is there. For gamers, their games are there. Their photos and videos are there. They can update their status from there. Their events are there.

Note: Google has released a new product for Google Docs that may play a significant, indirect role in its battle with Facebook. More on that here.

Will you set Facebook as your home page? Do you already have it set? Let us know in the comments.

November 24, 2010
Should Gmail Be Worried About Facebook?

You’ve no doubt heard or read about Facebook’s new messaging announcement this week. If not, the company announced a new messaging system to combine email, SMS, IM, Chat, and other forms of online communication, bringing them into one inbox. Along with this comes @facebook.com email addresses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the system as "starting from scratch" as opposed to being a Facebook email product.

Pat Matthews, SVP of RackSpace‘s cloud computing business, which includes business email, shared some thoughts with us about the impact Facebook’s new offering will have on the email industry. RackSpace itself powers business email for over 2 million users.

"I don’t think Facebook will encroach on business mail, at least not anytime soon, mostly because of the security and privacy implications," Matthews tells WebProNews. "Facebook is very consumer oriented and I don’t see this crossing into business anytime soon. Mark Zuckerberg has specifically stated the company is all about consumers. His focus is leading them to greatness."

"I do think consumer mail is at risk," he adds. "Consumers live in Facebook, not on Google. I think that Gmail and AOL should be worried."

Still, Google has Google Apps going for it, which it has now expanded to encompass most of the company’s offerings. That could play a significant role in keeping businesses using Google, though Gmail has always been a part of Google Apps. I have to wonder if Google’s news wasn’t somehow spurred by Facebook’s.

"Facebook users will use Facebook mail as an extension of their already popular messaging services," says Matthews. "I have no doubt this will be extremely popular."

"Facebook is one of the most innovative companies on the planet," he adds. "I think that they will influence all types of applications, business and consumer."

It’s no secret that businesses are already placing a great deal of emphasis on reaching Facebook users, and it will be very interesting to see the impact the new messaging system has on their strategies. I’ve already speculated that we’ll start seeing more businesses utilizing personal profiles to try and get into Facebook users’ primary inboxes (as the system filters messages that aren’t from "friends" into a secondary inbox).

Social media and email have been getting closer and closer with one another for some time already. "In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only," said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner, who predicts 20% of employees will use social networks as a main business communication tool by 2014.

"Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles," she said. "However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organizations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”"

When asked what Facebook’s new system means for the larger trend of social networking and email converging, Matthews told WebProNews, "Consumers want one view for many things but they also want very different views for their personal and business lives. This is why I really think Gmail should be worried."

It is worth noting that our conversation with Matthews took place before Google’s announcement, so I’ll have to find out if this changes his opinion on that. Update: He says, "They are proving they’re worried by doing this. All of these apps already existed so I doubt this move will make that big of an impact. The main thing Google needs to worry about is the fact that people are living their personal lives inside Facebook. They’re going to want their personal email and apps where they already live."

What do you think? Should Gmail be worried?

Go here for Mark Zuckerberg’s philsophy behind the new messaging system.

November 22, 2010
Mark Zuckerberg Shares Philosophy Behind New Facebook Messaging System

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the Web 2.0 Summit and faced an interrogation from Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle. He spent a good portion of the discussion talking about the new messaging system announced this week.

He said that Facebook was not looking to build an email product, but more what a "modern messaging system" would be if they started from scratch. "One of the things that is very good to solve with the social graph is spam," he said. "It’s been a classic email problem."

"Email filters of the past ten or fifteen years have gotten very good at filtering out the real junk, so you don’t get a lot of Viagra email anymore, but you do get a lot of random emails from the services you subscribe to…different things that you connect to that you might not be that interested in hearing from," he continued. "And one thing that email can’t do is differentiate between two real people who are both real people sending you legitimate emails, but it can’t differentiate between which one you like more."

While this may sound like he’s basically calling anything that’s not from your Facebook friends spam, it’s worth noting that the new system includes a secondary inbox (between the prioritized one and the actual junk folder) that would hold all of the other legitimate messages, like opt-in messages. He said he expects people to check this secondary inbox at least once a day, while the lower-level folder would hold the actual spam, like those Viagra emails.

O’Reilly pointed out that Gmail’s starting to do the priority filtering stuff with its Priority Inbox feature, to which Zuckerberg replied, "And that stuff is pretty cool…but I mean I think for a long time people have agreed that the real way to solve spam and filtering is you should have a list of the people that you want to hear from, and we could just do that so easily for people, because they have their friends list, their friends have their friends lists…so we can tell not only the people who you communicate with, but who are the people in your network who are likely to be sending you something that’s interesting."

This system does present some possible obstacles for legitimate email marketers, which is one reason I believe we’ll see more businesses utilizing personal Facebook profiles to connect with customers, to gain access into that prioritized inbox. If you’re a friend, you can get in there. However, just as CopyBlogger’s Brian Clark discussed with us, you have to get people to like you, and you probably won’t be their "friend" for long if you just start messaging them with marketing messages.

Of course, we don’t even know what kind of adoption Facebook’s system’s going to see at this point. A lot of people are expressing privacy concerns, and aren’t ready to get that intimate with the social network, but on the other hand, it does have over half a billion users.

"I think a lot of the products that we build have the property that you create social dynamics where people explicitly want to share things with other people, and that ends up being a better way to filter things that you can get through an algorithm," said Zuckerberg.

"Some of the examples of products we’ve launched or worked on recently are good examples of this," he added. "I mean Photos goes back a while. Groups is pretty recent, but they both have this property. If you were to ask people like ten years ago, what would be the best way to take a big set of photos and identify the people in them, most people probably would’ve said you should probably have like a face recognition algorithm or something like that and kind of crunch all the photos, but it turns out that it’s just a lot easier to let people tag their photos of their friends and create a good interface where you have your friends list there and you can do that. It just works really well."

"And the same thing with Groups," he continued. "People have come up with interface[s] where you try to sort people into groups automatically, and we’ve found that…and Groups has been one of our fastest growing products ever…what we’ve found is that it works really well when you can put your friends into a group. I mean one person does manual work, and they do the work for the network. So you get five to ten percent of users putting all their friends into groups and now everyone can use these products for effective small group communication. It’s really cool."

Battelle noted that not everyone likes being put into groups, and that Facebook seems to have a strategy of asking for forgiveness rather than permission, meaning the company basically does what it wants, then if people don’t like it, they apologize, make the necessary adjustments and move on.

"Our view is that the friend relationship is meaningful," Zuckerberg responded. "That’s the whole point of having a bi-directional relationship instead of a one way follow model. It’s a confirmed thing. I mean, we’re friends. In this graph what that means is that you now have the right to do certain things. You can post on my page. You can tag me in photos. Now – filtering in my inbox is sort of on that too, because now any of your friends can send a message that goes to my inbox, so that’s really how we look at it."

In the sixty-five minute discussion, Zuckerberg talks about a lot of other things, including the whole data exportation and tiff with Google’s that’s been dominating the tech headlines of late. Watch it above.

November 17, 2010
Does Urgency Matter More in Email Than in Social Media?

Flock, creator of the social web browser, sent WebProNews some interesting findings about the social media habits of consumers. One finding we found particularly interesting was that based on responses to a survey from the company, 74% say they feel pressure to respond to emails within a day, while only 52% feel the same about Facebook postings. Even more interesting is that only 26% feel that way about responding to personal tweets on Twitter.

Why do you think people place such a lesser amount of emphasis on timeliness when it comes to Twitter? Share your thoughts here.

Here are the findings the company shared:

– 93% feel their relationships with others have stayed the same or improved because of their interaction with friends and family through social media.

– The majority of respondents feel pressure to "keep up" with their online communications, particularly with email where 74% stated they should respond that day while 52% felt the need to reply immediately to Facebook postings. Surprisingly, only 26% saw any need to reply to personal tweets on Twitter.

– 64% of respondents feel stressed at some point to keep up with online social media

– 60% said they do most of their communicating on social sites from their home while just 17% accessed social media at work. Teachers do not have to worry as only 2% said they tweet or post from school.

– 89% have signed up to one-ten social networks/apps with 11% interacting with more than ten.

– 28% have over 500 contacts with 31% spending 11-20 hours a week communicating with their friends and family. 9% spend over 60 hours per week on social media.

– 49% of respondents use social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and social applications like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Shopkick (excluding email) to communicate with others more than 50% of their time.

– Social media is on the rise in business with 72% stating that they use it for communications with business contacts.

What you do with this information is up to you, but it’s clear social media is becoming an increasingly popular avenue of communication, not just among consumers, but among businesses (not to mention between consumers and businesses). However, at this point, if you have messages that require timely responses, it’s looking like your best bet is still communicating through email.

Of course this will certainly depend on the person you’re communicating with. Still, I think it’s safe to say that most people, particularly in business, will still be checking their email fairly regularly. From a business perspective, I’d make a habit out of timely communication no matter what the channel.

I would suggest putting a little more emphasis on subject lines, whether you’re communicating by email, Facebook, or Twitter. People are more likely to open your message if the subject is enticing and/or relevant to them. If they open, they’re one step closer to responding.

What is your preferred channel of communication: email, Facebook, or Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

October 24, 2010
15 Reasons Google TV Will Make a Huge Impact on the Web

Connected TV isn’t a new concept anymore, but it’s about to get way more interesting, courtesy of Google TV. WebProNews was there for the unveiling of the product at Google I/O back in May, and having seen it in person, I can tell you it’s pretty cool.

Will Google change the web or is it just a bunch of hype? Tell us what you think.

Google TV may have a much bigger impact on the web than a lot of people realize at this point. Here are a few reasons why I think this to be the case.

1. Google TV is Huge for Local Business

Google is good at geo-targeting advertising. People turn to Google more and more to look up local business info. Google is placing search at arguably the best place to reach a person in their home – the TV. Connect the dots.

2. Google TV is Huge for E-Commerce

Google TV puts the entire web at the fingertips of TV watchers all the time. Mobile does the same, but now the web is even more front and center in the viewer’s attention. Anytime a user sees a commercial for some item or hears something mentioned in a TV show, they can easily flip over to the web, find it and buy it without leaving their couch. Even if their phone is charging in the other room, they have immediate access.

3. Google TV is Huge for Online Video

Google TV will make it so much easier for TV viewers to flip channels outside of what their cable/satellite provider offers. Nothing on TV? Oh well, there are billions of things to watch online. Google TV even goes out of its way to make YouTube a more convenient destination for watching video, and the options certainly aren’t limited to YouTube. One could even envision TV stations coming out with their own paid apps (not unlike newspapers and magazines are currently doing for the iPad).

4. Google TV is Huge for Piracy

One side effect of this is that watching pirated content will be easier and more enticing than ever. This is essentially for the same reasons mentioned above. Those who engage in this activity will be even more tempted from their TVs.

5. Google TV is Huge for Internet Radio

Everybody loves Internet radio. Sites like Pandora, Last.fm, Grooveshark, etc. let users listen to music they are really interested in hearing, rather than being subjected to the same old stuff the traditional radio stations throw at them over and over again (with commercials). Internet radio on the TV is just another hub to tap into these outlets, and likely a better one than the phone in terms of quality. Your TV is probably hooked up with better speakers.

6. Google TV is Huge for Android

The more Google TV catches on, the more people are likely to flock to Android as their mobile OS of choice. People are going to want devices that have as much integration with one another as possible. Plus, Android apps will work on Google TV. It will be easy to use the same apps between devices if both of the devices are running the same OS.

7. Google TV is Huge for Google Search

Google doesn’t need a lot of help in getting search market share at this point, but Bing is doing everything in its power to creep up. Combined with various mobile apps and social media, people sometimes find less reasons to turn to Google for info. Google TV puts Google search a click away on the most important screen in the user’s home.

8. Google TV is Huge for Facebook, Twitter, and Possibly "Google Me"

People are spending a lot of time using social media these days, whether its sharing content, talking to friends, sharing status updates or whatever. They’re doing it while they watch TV. They’re talking about things that are on TV. If they’re not, TV is probably taking up a separate amount of time in their lives, and Google TV will bring it all together.

I’m guessing many Google TV users will be Facebooking and tweeting from their TVs frequently. In fact, this could have pretty big implications for Google’s own "Google Me" social layers. How many ways will Google let users socialize from Google TV? Besides offering the entire web, they can pretty much do anything they want with the interface. This could be a big opportunity for Google to push use of its own social features.

9. Google TV is Huge for News

People like to watch the news on TV. However, having the web on the TV provides instant access to a much greater selection of news sources, which means people will get more personalized news programming tailored to their specific interests. Remember what Google did for print news? Feel free to try out videos.dev.webpronews.com from the TV.

10. Google TV is Huge for Gaming

Once again, this is simply a product of the entire web being on TV. This means web games, which are becoming increasingly popular (Farmville anyone)? Google itself has made various gaming-related acquisitions, and will likely continue to do so. They also have the Chrome Web Store for web apps. Suddenly there are a lot more options than what the traditional consoles have to offer. As the web on TV becomes more of the norm, online games will only increase in quality. And of course three is the "free" factor.

11. Google TV is Huge for Communication

The TV may become a primary platform for communication, whether its through Skype, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, or other video chat options. People are going to keep in touch with one another without having to get out of their recliners.

12. Google TV is Huge for Chrome

Chrome is doing pretty well these days. It’s got a long way to go before it achieves IE-like status, in terms of usage, but guess what browser comes with Google TV. Not only will it increase Chrome usage by default, it will get non-Chrome users accustomed to Chrome, and may in turn get them using Chrome from their computers.

13. Google TV is Huge for Online Advertising

Needless to say, Google TV will instantly put online ads in front of more eyeballs more frequently.

14. Google TV is Huge for Application Development

Smartphones have done quite a bit for application development haven’t they? I wonder how many more people have TVs than smartphones. This will be huge for not only Android developers, but for developers of web apps.

15. Google TV is Huge for the Web period.

Google TV can really only help anything that is web-based for the simple fact that the web is on the TV. I realize this is not exclusive to Google TV, but Google TV, in my opinion, has the best shot at gaining real mass adoption, compared to any of its competitors. The DISH Network partnership won’t hurt either.

The biggest obstacle that could potentially impede all of this is if Google TV flops. Given all it’s got going for it, I don’t think it will though. Google was smart to take the Netflix approach in providing a platform, as opposed to a device (like competitors). Netflix uses the model of offering its service on more and more devices. This is essentially Google’s approach, and I would expect Google TV to launch for new devices much more frequently. One good thing for Netflix is that this means more Netflix-ready devices. This strategy will also allow Google to get the product in front of a wide range of audiences and price ranges.

Remember, you can’t judge the offering entirely from the initial product availability. That will grow – maybe even to a device you already own. Upon Google TV’s announcement, Sony CEO Howard Stringer was asked if consumers could expect Google TV integration with Sony Playstation. He said Sony was working with Google on one product at a time. Judging from the looks exchanged between Stringer and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, it certainly didn’t seem like the idea was ruled out.

Google is also smart to support not only Android, but iPhone as well, in terms of remote control use. This could be huge in gaining support even from Apple users.

Not convinced Google TV is that big a deal? Give us your reasons.

October 10, 2010
Skype Finally Makes Its Way to Android

Skype announced that it is now available on a wide range of Android phones (it has been available on some models from Verizon). Users of supported devices can simply go to skype.com/m on their phone to download it or find it in the Android Market.

Unfortunately, not all Android users will be able to use Skype to its fullest. "Skype has been tested on HTC and Motorola devices with Android OS 2.1 and above," says Skype’s Peter Parkes. "It may work on other Android phones, but we can’t guarantee full functionality or compatibility. We’re aware of some problems with the Samsung Galaxy S, and we’re looking to address these in the future."

The app allows users to call other Skype users for free, as well as send and receive IMs (also for free). This can be done from one person to another or with a group of people. For other calls, the rates look like this:

Android users who use Skype on their computers will see their full contact lists when they sign in to Skype on their phones. It’s worth noting that while Skype is always free in WiFi zones, you may get charged by your operator if you don’t have an unlimited data plan.

In the United States, users can make calls only over WiFi, and Skype’s not available in the Chinese or Japanese Android Markets.

In other Skype news, the company is getting a new CEO. Tony Bates, who comes from Cisco, will start at Skype later this month.

October 5, 2010
Skype Names Tony Bates of Cisco As New CEO

Skype announced today that it has appointed Tony Bates its new CEO and Board member. He was previously Senior Vice President of Cisco and General Manager of Cisco’s Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Division.

He was responsible for over $20 billion of annual revenue and the company’s Borderless Networks, DataCenter and Collaboration architectures. He managed over 12,500 employees for Cisco.

He also served as General Manager of Cisco’s Service Provider Group, responsible for annual revenue of $10 billion.

"Skype is not only a powerful global brand but also a global technology leader in Internet communications," said Bates. "There are extraordinary opportunities ahead for Skype and I am eager to lead the company through this exciting juncture in its continuing transformation. I look forward to working with Skype’s management team and talented employees to engineer the next wave of game-changing products and services for our users."

"We are thrilled to bring on Tony Bates as Skype’s new CEO," said Miles Flint, Chairman of Skype’s Board of Directors. "His record of achievement and significant operational and management expertise, cultivated over a distinguished tenure at one of the world’s preeminent technology companies, presents a unique opportunity for Skype that we are enthusiastic to embrace."

Outgoing CEO Josh Silverman said, "I am proud to have led Skype’s growth during this critical transition period. The company today has over 560 million registered users in nearly every country and continues to develop products and services our customers love to use. With a world-class communications industry veteran like Tony, Skype is well positioned to become the communications platform of choice for consumers and businesses around the world. I look forward to supporting Tony and the team in ensuring a smooth transition."

Bates will join Skype as CEO at the end of the month. In the meantime, Skype CFO Adrian Dillon will assume the responsibilities.

October 4, 2010
Gmail Gets a Long Overdue Setting

Google is launching a new option in Gmail that lets users turn of conversation threads. This is a feature that was innovative when Google released its popular email service years ago, but not everyone has been a fan of this style of email communication.

I’m not sure why it’s taken Google so long to offer a setting to turn the feature off, but better late than never, I suppose, for those who aren’t fans.

It’s a smart move, because it could entice some people to use Gmail, who have resisted the service based on conversation threads. I’m guessing some have, and this is another reason the move seems pretty overdue.

Gmail is one of Google’s most powerful weapons in the realm of social, which the company is putting an increased emphasis on now. It is in Google’s best interest for as many people to like Gmail as possible. I suspect Gmail will play an increasingly central role across Google’s whole universe as it adds social layers to more of its products, and places more emphasis on Google accounts/profiles.

This is a seemingly minor change that could have significant ramifications.

To adjust the setting, simply go to settings, find "Conversation view" and turn it on/off. Google will be rolling out the feature over the next several days.

September 29, 2010
Skype Announces Deal with Avaya

Skype announced that it has entered a new agreement with Avaya, a provider of enterprise communications systems, software, and services. The deal is to deliver real-time communications and collaboration solutions to businesses of all sizes.

Avaya customers in the U.S. will have access to Skype Connect and Skype users can make inbound calls to Avaya customers in the U.S. for free or at a low cost. Calls will be treated with Avaya’s routing, conferencing, messaging, mobility and contact center capabilities, as well as other collaboration services.

“Avaya and Skype have been working along parallel paths to offer, innovative, scalable, low cost, SIP-based communications to our respective markets,” said Alan Baratz, senior vice president, Avaya and president, Avaya Global Communications Solutions. “Now, the two companies will work together, striving to improve collaboration and customer service by federating Avaya and Skype solutions for a common user experience that delivers unique benefits for businesses and their customers who are Skype users.”

“Our relationship with Avaya is expected to expand the footprint for Skype Connect into more enterprises in the U.S. market, while allowing us to help Avaya’s customers benefit from Skype’s cost savings and access to Skype’s global user base,” said David Gurlé, vice president and general manager of Skype for Business. “We believe our integrated solution in the second half of 2011 is expected to offer the benefits of Skype to a growing number of businesses and open up new ways for people to communicate and collaborate.”

It is also rumored that Skype is preparing a deal with Facebook.

September 29, 2010
Hotmail Gets a New Round of Feature Upgrades

Microsoft announced that it is rolling out some new features to Hotmail. These include: the ability to track packages referenced in your email from Hotmail itself, chat with Facebook friends, sharing photos more easily with expanded coverage and new features, viewing more videos from inside Hotmail, and organizing and finding important email with subfolders.

"Emails that include a package tracking number will now light up in Hotmail thanks to ActiveViews, which automatically recognize the number and display the real time shipping status above the email, saving you a trip to the shipper’s website," explains Windows Live Hotmail Group Program Manager Dick Craddock. "The US Postal Service is fully supported, and with this new release, our new partner FedEx will be as well, with light versions for DHL and UPS that provide a link to the shipper’s website instead of full shipping details inside the email."

Hotmail’s photo-sharing features are rolling out from only the U.S. to the rest of the world. "Email is the most popular place to share photos, with 1.5 billion pictures shared each month on Hotmail alone," says Craddock. "But attachment size limits have long made the process cumbersome. Over the summer, Hotmail became the first service to let you to send hundreds of large photos per email, up to 10 GB of photos per email, by sharing them as a new photo album on SkyDrive. Today, this option is only available in the US, but with this release, we are rolling it out worldwide."

Microsoft is also increasing the total attachment size limit per email to 25MB. As far as viewing video, Microsoft is now including videos from Dailymotion and Justin.tv. Before it was just YouTube and Hulu.

September 23, 2010
Google Voice Gives Users Missed Call Notifications

Google is now letting Google Voice users get notifications for missed calls. Users can get notified via their Google Voice inbox or they can opt to receive email notifications (or both).

This would appear to be another step in Google bringing together your different means of communication. Google Voice already gives you a number that when called reaches you through all of your phones.

Google recently rolled out the ability to make and receive calls from within Gmail. The service attracted over a million calls in just 24 hours.

Last week, Google highlighted some additional features of calling in Gmail, like call screening, switching calls between Gmail and other phones, recording incoming calls, and a click-to-dial Chrome extension.

To turn on the Google Voice notifications, go to the Calls tab in the settings menu.

September 7, 2010
Twitter CEO Talks Stats, Ecosystem, Hints at New Features

Twitter CEO Evan Williams revealed some numbers about Twitter usage on the company blog, while talking about how the Twitter ecosystem (of third-party developers and apps) continues to play an important role in the company’s success. Twitter has over 145 million registered users, he says.

Not that this is a surprise by any means, but mobile is also playing an increasingly important role. "Total mobile users has jumped 62 percent since mid-April, and, remarkably, 16 percent of all new users to Twitter start on mobile now, as opposed to the five percent before we launched our first Twitter-branded mobile client," says Williams. "As we had hoped in April, these clients are bringing more people into Twitter, and, even better, they are attracting and retaining active users. Indeed, 46 percent of active users make mobile a regular part of their Twitter experience."

Speaking of mobile, it has been confirmed that Twitter is testing push notifications for its iPhone app. MG Siegler shares a statement from the company: We’ve been testing push notifications internally. When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users. We’ve stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app. So, push isn’t ready yet but we look forward to rolling this out soon.

Williams provided the following chart of applications showing how people are actually using Twitter:

"And, while the percentage of overall users drops off pretty sharply after the few listed here, there are a tremendous number of other apps that people are using, not necessarily as their main Twitter client, but as an alternative way to create or view Tweets," Williams says. "The number of registered OAuth applications is now at almost 300,000—this number has nearly tripled since Chirp. (This can include multiple instances of the same software.)"

Willimas spoke last night in San Francisco. Liz Gannes has a summary of what he had to say, which was mostly about how Twitter is diferent than email and Google, but Willimas also hinted at some upcoming features.

Gannes reports, "Williams also said to expect forthcoming products that would help filter relevant tweets around events, similar to what it’s doing with location. This would go beyond the user-developed convention of hashtags, he said, though he didn’t elaborate."

The biggest thing Twitter has done to reduce noise since its launch has been the launch of lists. This has helped significantly, but I think Twitter users will gladly accept other ways to accomplish this.

September 3, 2010
Skype for Windows Gets Ten-Way Video Calling

Skype released an update to Skype for Windows, which allows you to make group video calls with up to ten people. This is in beta.

There is also a new design. Skype’s Peter Parkes writes, "You’ll notice that the new-look Skype is sleeker, neater and crisper than before, and we’re proud of the work our interface designers have done to refine and mature the interface for this version. We’ve also added Skype Home, where you can follow your contacts’ mood messages, set your profile picture and mood message, receive account notifications and learn more about using Skype."

Other improvements include:

– Skype Home experience

– Offline instant messaging

– New contact search and add experience

– Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions

– Post call experience

This version of Skype can be downloaded here. Remember, everyone participating in the video call has to be using this version.

September 2, 2010
Greplin is Real Personalized Search

There’s a new kind of personalized, social search available that may trump any effort we’ve seen from Google to date in this corner of search.

Greplin is a new site that searches through "all your online data in one place, really fast" – or at least your the online data you have in the services that it supports, which is likely far from all of your online data. Still, the concept behind the site is pretty noteworthy, and it will likely add more services as time goes on.

With the regular version, you can add Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. With the pro version, you can also add Salesforce, Evernote, box, Basecamp, and Google Voice.

There is obviously great potential for a service like this. With so many forms of communicating and networking available, it can sometimes be hard to remember just which service was used in some instance. If you can search across all services to find what you’re looking for, it’s going to save time. There is likely significant demand for a tool like this.

There is also room for evolution. What other kinds of features could Greplin offer in the future, taking advantage of all the services you give it access to?

The site is in beta, and once you give it access to your info, it says it will email you when the system’s ready for you. TechCrunch has a demo.

September 1, 2010
Skype Launches Skype Connect for Businesses

Skype has launched Skype Connect 1.0, formerly known as Skype for SIP. This is a product that enables IP-enabled private branch exchange (PBX) or Unified Communications (UC) systems to connect to Skype.

Businesses can use Skype Connect to make outbound calls from their desktop phones to landlines and mobiles worldwide and billed at Skype’s standard per minute calling rates, receive inbound calls from Skype connected users by placing click & call buttons on their sites, and receive calls from landlines or mobiles in the corporate PBX with Skype’s online numbers that have been purchased separately. Users can also manage Skype calls using existing PBX or UC systems’ features like call routing, automatic call distribution, conferencing, auto-attendant, voicemail, call recording, and logging.

"Since its inception, Skype has been used by many businesses wanting to reduce communications costs," says David Gurlé, VP and general manager of Skype for Business. "In fact, based on internal research, in the first quarter of 2010, approximately 37% of Skype users reported that they use Skype for some business or business-related purposes."

"Our team’s goal is to empower businesses of all sizes and types with rich communications tools to unleash their productivity, while reducing their telecommunications costs," says Gurlé. "Following Skype Manager’s launch in May, we are very proud to add Skype Connect to our list of specially designed enterprise solutions. Skype Connect seeks to enable our customers to reduce their phone bills, while protecting their investment in existing telecommunications equipment."

Skype Connect has been available in beta form. In that time, it has connected over 2,400 active customers, and has received PBX and UC certification from Avaya, Cisco, SIPfoundry, ShoreTel, and other OEMs.

More info about Skype Connect can be found in this guide (pdf).

August 30, 2010
Over a Million Calls Made from Gmail in First 24 Hours

Google announced (via Twitter) that over 1,000,000 people placed calls from Gmail within just 24 hours. This feature began rolling out yesterday (and as far as I can tell isn’t even finished yet).

"Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers," says Google software engineer Robin Schriebman. "But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?’"

Over 1,000,000 calls placed from Gmail in just 24 hours! Thanks to everyone using this new feature http://bit.ly/aRgNtcThu Aug 26 18:29:35 via webA Googler
google

Google tested the feature internally before releasing it to the public (in the U.S. so far). When users with Google Voice numbers call people, that number will display as the caller ID.

Along with the launch, the company showed off some phone booths it will be setting up in universities and airports. Danny Sullivan got to peek inside one:

The phone booths should go a long way in showing off this feature and familiarizing people with Google Voice in general, which seems to be the company’s real goal.

Clearly there is an interest in making phone calls from Gmail, as the numbers from the first day indicate.

August 26, 2010