WebDialogs has been offering beta versions of its Unyte desktop sharing application for Skype for over six months. However, with the release of Skype 3.0, Unyte has become one of the top downloads from the Extras Gallery resulting in over 5,000 installations daily. Simply doing a download is not sufficient for Unyte to count as an installation; Unyte requires that a user not only download and install the program but also initiate at least one session with a remote participant. Key to Unyte's success:

• Increased visibility and awareness through the Extras Gallery
• A positive initial user experience in not only downloading and installing but also in using the product.
• An intuitive user interface
• While a session host needs to download and install the 1MB client, participants in a desktop sharing session simply need any web browser (IE 6 or 7, Firefox, Opera) in any OS (Windows Mac, Linux) to view the shared desktop.

The screen above shows Unyte coming from Phil's desktop to my Firefox 2 browser. Note that there is one level of magnification to all viewing at the native resolution of the shared desktop (with panning).

The free version of Unyte provides basic desktop sharing for one-to-one sessions; it allows the user to get experience with its ease-of-installation and -operation. However, a paid subscription brings many additional features including:

164% YOY growth net revenues

• Q4-2006 $66 million (91 days)
• Q4-2005 $25 million (75 days of operations - from the acquisition date of October 14, 2005 through end of Q4-05)

129% YOY growth registered users: More than 380 thousand new users every day in Q4.

• Q4-2006 171 million, 35 million new accounts in the quarter
• Q4-2005 75 million users

Other highlights

• 32 billion minutes of Skype conversation in 2006. [Correction: an earlier version of this post read "2005" instead of "2006". 2006 is correct.]
• China growth high; try-before-you-buy promotions a hit.
• Working to improve the quality, so bought Sonorit.
• 2007 Skype goals: more users, more partners, expanding the product, ease of use, voice quality.
• eBay-wide goals: better user experience. improving security.
• Skype Me buttons now in 150 categories and in most countries. Positive feedback from sellers on sales conversion rates.

Technorati tags: skype, stats, statistics, financials, ebay, ebayinc, skypejournal, chart, minutes

1. New PSTN connection charge (3.9 eurocents per call)
2. Skype Pro annual domestic calling plan for some countries
3. More regions now get 1.7 eurocent global calling rate

More details in the slideshare below.

These are aggressive marketing moves. Skype Pro should boost Skype's viral spread, and make it harder to leave the Skype community.

skype rates prices pricing plans callingplan skypejournal

A version of the Skype news release below the fold.

A mobile phone charging station would have put them out of business, I think.

Payoff: getting retailers to sample the product.

Not sure any of this goodwill can overcome their mythic failure at Target (1 unit sold per store in 8 months).

Technorati tags: voip, vonage, skypejournal, skype, ces2007, ces, marketing, marcom, publicity, pr

Skype was his solution. He'd bring the client right into his recording studio, piping his high end recording into Skype. The client would hear Joe's takes and, when they were satisfied, approve the reading on the spot. The sessions run a little longer but the clients are getting exactly what they expect, Joe doesn't spread one small fee over two or three studio sessions, and the clients are bringing repeat business. The clients get to be the session director, the person in the glass booth guiding Joe's inflection and interpretation. That sense of control, and the high fidelity, leave them very happy. And builds Joe's bottom line. 

Technorati tags: skype, skypejournal, bloghaus, joeklein, podcast, vlog, voiceover, podcastvoiceguys, podcasting, vlogging, production, skypeforbusiness.

Skype released this video to the U.S. and Canadian press for editing into nightly news reports. It has (a) sound bites by a Skype executive (the new payment plan), (b) a finance counselor (saving money is a good thing), and (c) a user (staying in touch with family is good. especially when it doesn't cost you as much.)

I'm posting this less because it is newsworthy than the contrast in brand notes. On the one hand you have Don Albert emphasizing Skype's value added features, how it improves communication and is qualitatively different from phone calls. On the other hand, you have Skype's Unlimited Calling plan coming in at a disruptive 10% of comparable plans from AT&T, Verizon, Vonage et al. Which message comes through stronger? Savings.

Skype's biggest challenge? Getting people to understand this is $X per year, not per month. When you hear $40, you say "I'm paying about that now, what's new about that?" But I pay $40 monthly to AT&T long distance for flat rate service throughout the US (not sure about Canada). I may just pocket that.

Does adoption rise when people pay? The big win here is framing Skype as comparable to existing services, and a very low cost alternative. People are angry, scared, frustrated, and desperate over their communication bills. I don't have any teenagers at home and I spend about $60 on mobile, $80 for local and dsl; about $2200/year with long distance thrown in.

I'm sure the money will look very good come April's investor conference call, and will set a pattern for other regions.

I'd love to see Skype carve out discount programs for K-12 schools and teachers. ]]>

Skype released this video to the U.S. and Canadian press for editing into nightly news reports. It has (a) sound bites by a Skype executive (the new payment plan), (b) a finance counselor (saving money is a good thing), and (c) a user (staying in touch with family is good. especially when it doesn't cost you as much.)

I'm posting this less because it is newsworthy than the contrast in brand notes. On the one hand you have Don Albert emphasizing Skype's value added features, how it improves communication and is qualitatively different from phone calls. On the other hand, you have Skype's Unlimited Calling plan coming in at a disruptive 10% of comparable plans from AT&T, Verizon, Vonage et al. Which message comes through stronger? Savings.

Skype's biggest challenge? Getting people to understand this is $X per year, not per month. When you hear $40, you say "I'm paying about that now, what's new about that?" But I pay $40 monthly to AT&T long distance for flat rate service throughout the US (not sure about Canada). I may just pocket that.

Does adoption rise when people pay? The big win here is framing Skype as comparable to existing services, and a very low cost alternative. People are angry, scared, frustrated, and desperate over their communication bills. I don't have any teenagers at home and I spend about $60 on mobile, $80 for local and dsl; about $2200/year with long distance thrown in.

I'm sure the money will look very good come April's investor conference call, and will set a pattern for other regions.

I'd love to see Skype carve out discount programs for K-12 schools and teachers. ]]> http://www.thevoipdigest.com/b-roll-to-salve-your-anger-uscanada-unlimited-calling-plan.htm/feed/ http://www.thevoipdigest.com/don-albert-interview-skype-north-america-general-manager.htm http://www.thevoipdigest.com/don-albert-interview-skype-north-america-general-manager.htm#comments Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:52:42 +0000 Skype Journal Business http://www.skypejournal.com/blog/2006/12/donalbert200611interview.html I interviewed Don Albert on Tuesday, 28 November 2006, over lunch at eBay’s cafeteria. Albert is Skype’s general manager for the United States and Canada, what Skype calls North America. This transcript is roughly edited. Jennifer Caukin, Skype’s North America public relations director sat in. – Phil Wolff

The day before our talk, Skype started reorganizing, moving marketing functions to their London headquarters under chief marketing officer Henry Gomez.

Skype Journal: With marketing more centralized in London and engineering in Tallinn, what’s here?

Don Albert: So Henry and the rest of the executive team thought it was really important to have a team on the ground. Because this market requires some special attention. Skype is not as well known or as well penetrated here as it is in Europe or Asia. We have a few marketing folks and a few business development folks here. I think our total team is probably ten or eleven people now. We have a couple of PR folks that you’ll be getting to know, and someone that does promotions within North America.

We’re also looking not so much at unique product for North America but at packaging, pricing, things like that, that might make sense for this market. I report to Henry and we have been working closely with the marketing functions over there and will continue to do so. We’re not totally self sufficient here; there aren’t enough of us to do everything.

Have you worked with Henry before?

A little bit.

Will the free SkypeOut continue in North America? Do you know yet?

We’re getting pretty close to finalizing that and we’ll probably be coming back to you in about two weeks.

How are you thinking about that decision?

The first thing is the program did everything that we wanted it to do. We saw a nice ramp up in new user acquisition in the U.S. and it stuck at the higher level, which was great. And we’ve seen a big surge in SkypeOut calling, so more people are trying SkypeOut, which is a good thing.

Jennifer Caukin: The calls on SkypeOut are beyond just North America; a lot them internationally too. Because people kind of adopt using it for their local and domestic calls going beyond as well.

Don Albert: Our revenue is back up above where it was pre-promotion, even though we’re giving away all the U.S. and Canada calls. So we have got so many more users now that our international revenue has more than made up for what we gave upon the U.S. and Canada revenue. We viewed the promotion as a marketing expense; obviously it required investment on our part, paying all the termination fees. And the amount of calling in the U.S. and Canada went up 10X so those fees, especially as we get bigger, can get fairly significant.

Our Canadians all want to know about SkypeIn. What is Skype doing to get SkypeIn in Canada?

The issues really are regulatory in nature. Chris Libertelli, working out of our Washington office, is the right guy to talk to about that.

From where you sit, what business is Skype in?

We spent some time going through Skype's subscribers and traffic flows, and compared them with "traditional" international traffic (that is, phone to phone traffic, whether it's carried by switched carriers, or IP based carriers, like iBasis).

Skype's numbers are huge--particularly for a company that was only founded in 2004. Interestingly, though, Skype's growth has not yet had a quantifiable impact on switched volumes. Aggregate traffic from the many many carriers we surveyed has continued to grow, pretty well in line with historical trends.

Skypelights:

• Skype traffic grew by 6.2 billion minutes in the last year. From 7.6 billion minutes in 2005 to 13.8 billion projected in 2006. 80% year over year.

Just in case that's sounds like a lot...

• Other VoIP traffic grew by 16.8 billion minutes to 42 billion minutes. These are the Vonages, cable and telco voip offerings.

Their growth was bigger than Skype's total traffic. But wait, there's more.

• Swtiched telephony, grew 8% to 237 billion minutes. Switched growth was 18 billion minutes.

So even if Skype traffic is growing 10 times faster than switched service, picking up a few points of share, the Skype threat falls into telecom's background noise. Skype's revenue doesn't even fall in telecom's rounding errors.

What did growth cost? What did it take to sell 41 billion more minutes this year than last? Skype still has its dramatic advantage in marketing cost per minute served.

Where is Niklas' vision of free Skype calls forcing telcos to slash prices? The market hasn't reached a tipping point where customers fly to Skype. Yet. 

Still, it's amazing that one company, let alone a three year old company with 500 employees, is even showing up on the charts.