SOMETHING BORROWED
According to this Reuters story (via Techmeme), eBay is set to announce some Skype tie-ins into it's U.S. auction business tomorrow.
This effort will be underway while Skype continues it's efforts for it's core internet telephony services to be adopted by more mainstream users in the U.S.
I've had occasion to recommend Skype to several friends and family members in recent weeks. In some cases involving family less comfortable with technology, I've also had to set up their Skype accounts.
The key reason for going with Skype vs. other services from the GYMAAAE companies, including Yahoo!?
Well, it's Skype's current "promotional" pricing for it's SkypeOut service, whereby a Skype user can call any phone number in the U.S. and Canada for free, until the end of the year.
Not to mention the growing number of third-party enhancements to making the use of Skype feel more like a regular telephone experience.
I came away from these experiences with two possible ways Skype can make it's service better for mainstream users, borrowing from some legends from the past.
1. Offer Dead-Simple Set-up for multiple Family accounts:
This idea comes from having been an AOL (formerly known as America Online) subscriber for many years. One of the ways AOL propagated it's rapid adoption by mainstream users was by offering each paying subscriber the ability to set up to 5 to 7 (the number varied over the years) sub-accounts for family members. This was done via the master account, and allowed for quick and easy set-up of additional accounts, including "kid-safe" accounts with parental controls.
The key advantage of this was that family members in other locations could then simply install the AOL software via one of the aggressively distributed and ubiquitous AOL CDs, type in their sub-account name and password, and be online. They'd even have their very own email address. And all for no charge.
Why does this apply to Skype, a free service, where anyone can download the software, register with a user name and password and be off and running making free internet phone calls?
Because a lot of mainstream folks simply won't make the effort to do even that, despite the financial benefits.
Every family has a geeky, early adopter. If this person were given the ability to easily and remotely set up a bunch of accounts for family, where family members had to do nothing but click on a link, then Skype could benefit from faster mainstream adoption.
And this one-stop, multi-account set-up could also help introduce the second innovation.
2. Offer a Friends and Family Pricing Plan, a la MCI Communications.
MCI was one of the first telecommunications companies to introduce the "Friends & Family" pricing plans that drove it's adoption vs. AT&T in the latter part of the previous century. Not it's marketing tactic used by most telephone and cellular companies worldwide.
They generally work by offering discounts for signing up more family members to the same account.
Forget the discount, I'd just settle for the ability to pay for multiple SkypeOut accounts with one credit card.
One thing I found setting up a SkypeOut account for my mom, was that Skype currently doesn't seem to allow a current paying SkypeOut customer from using their stored credit card/PayPal account to pay for another account.
I got emails from Skype canceling my order for SkypeOut on her account citing the fact that I'd used the same payment mechanism for my own account.
Now, this is probably a well-thought out fraud-prevention mechanism.
But it's also a very effective deterrent to folks setting up SkypeOut accounts for family members.
Making me jump through hoops using different credit cards for different family members does not create the warm and fuzzies when I'm evangelizing the service to others.
Both these items should be relative easy to implement.
They're not rocket science, and Skype and eBay are likely working on these features as we speak.
But these are the kinds of features that can allow any internet telephony provider to leap-frog their competition.
Just look what they did for AOL and MCI.
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