Skype has been building itself up to becoming the most respected and used Internet phone company on the net, in fact, you would be hard pressed to find any worthy competition at all. The best part? It’s still free when calling computer to computer.
There is a price to be paid for this ‘free’ service though, and that is putting up with all the advertising. We see it (for the most part) as an irritant, but companies such as Skype see it as revenue.
Skype has put out a warning that more advertising is coming. In an interview with The Telegraph, CEO Josh Silverman has said:
“It’s challenging to get right as the way people use is Skype is very personal but we think our users expect us to do it so we can continue to support free. But it will be done in a tasteful way.”
I personally was under the impression that Skype was already sending out advertisements in the form of carefully constructed instant messages. These messages range in content from the obligatory “jackpot” to porn sites. These are remedied by blocking the user or simply closing the window, but are considered spam nonetheless. Skype denies any responsibility for these messages leaving it up to the user to combat these unwanted ads, which are sent out by spam users who sign up for fake accounts to send the spam from.
Will Skype’s new advertising just clutter up their interface and annoy users? As with everything that is coming out, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Source: The Next Web, The Telegraph
Interesting… I wonder if users like myself who have paid subscriptions will also get the full range of adverts – I’d hope not. I love Skype as a technology, but as a company they’ve always been a bit ‘confused’. Breaking away from Ebay is the best thing they’ve done in years, I hope the make the most of the opportunity, not just the most revenue. Badly-executed advertising won’t do them any favours, they’re not a monopoly, even though sometimes they appear to be and behave as one.
Rob