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Exactly. In hindsight we should have just built a separate messaging layer with a server backend like everyone else was doing. However Skype had no history of
by gregdoesit 11y ago
Exactly. In hindsight we should have just built a separate messaging layer with a server backend like everyone else was doing.
However Skype had no history of running servers. Just keeping the login servers up and running (a handful of them) was enough of a challenge.
Plus when the company's success and revenue was driven by the P2P team and they said the same layer will work for messages... there was no one strong enough to argue.
And when it was obvious that Skype messaging was sub par, the company just went in denial. "We aren't really competing with Whatsapp, because they don't do video" got us another year or two of not doing too much about the root cause.
It was after the Microsoft aquisition when some MS architects told the engineers upfront that p2p and realtime messaging - forget about it.
- JoBrad 11y agoI'm not sure if this story has been told this plainly elsewhere, but it probably should. I know plenty of people who got very paranoid of Skype after MS bought them.
- kpil 11y agoI think the denial is the important lession here. Plenty of people knew it didn't fly, and it couldn't have been that hard to fix it if you really wanted to do it, if you were prepared to drop p2p. But still it was a hard descision to make. Why do you think it's like that?
- gregdoesit 11y agoI think it was denial that messaging itself would be more inportant then video calling. Skype got massive because of video (and audio) calls. That was our main differentiator, and what helped us grow. P2P really excelled there. Messaging was built as almost an afterthought and supporting feature, piggybacking on whatever infrastructure we already had in place. And of course it didn't help that there was no one person or team in charge of the user experience who would call out that we have far inferior messaging experience then... any of our competitors, really. Even when we did - and aquired GroupMe to do something about it - we then still had the false sense of security and not needing to hurry, because user numbers were still growing upwards. And when they slowed down, it was too late.
- huherto 11y agoThanks for sharing. I can definetly see how that happens.
- ecobiker 11y agoI hope everyone within Skype used it as your main communication tool. If you did, the problem would have been so obvious. Not so long ago, it was revolutionary to be able to send messages to someone even when they were offline. However, once someone implements it every other chat app had very little time to do that. IMHO, there is nothing inherent about big companies from reacting quickly. It usually boils down to the culture of the company that's the cause. Call it "Bias for action" or "Ask forgiveness, not permission" or whatever you want to call it - a company (big or small) that allows people to go quickly fix an issue or try another solution instead of talking endlessly about it, well aware that there is a chance for failure, is the one that's likely to succeed.
- nodamage 11y ago> Not so long ago, it was revolutionary to be able to send messages to someone even when they were offline. How long ago was that exactly? From what I remember, ICQ had offline messaging around 1997.
- jamiesonbecker 11y agoWe used to have this technology called email which seemed pretty cool. You could even embed photos of your cat.