6 ms·

Am I such an outlier if I use Skype for business, not for leisure? I have clients on three continents and every single one used Skype to communicate about the p

Am I such an outlier if I use Skype for business, not for leisure? I have clients on three continents and every single one used Skype to communicate about the project. Skype was generally running on every machine as a "watercooler chat"/IRC replacement. Just open groups, give them names and pin them to the sidebar. Done. So I really expected this to be more secure, more portable and LESS designer-driven. Who is even narcissistic enough to use a sidebar that is a giant, high-res portrait of oneself?! Maybe a Slack/HipChat/... killer for boutique agencies?

gcb0 12y ago
i like to joke there are two types of tech companies, mutually exclusive. - profit driven - investor money driven skype is a profit company. wire is clearly investor money driven. So while your example is valid, i don't think they want to displace the corporate consumer that creates the bulky of skype profit. It probably wants to go after the users that uses snapchat/wasup/etc for free, with little revenue besides what is necessary for a "revenue" round A/B/C/IPO deck, and get investor money/get acquired. PS: while skype is a consumer product, its job is not to drive revenue, but to advertise the corporate solution: Lync. Lync gets microsoft 2bi/yr, while skype peak at 600m/yr in a good year. 600m sounds good, but not when you paid over 8bi for it.
- rplnt 12y ago
  Sadly, we mostly hear about those investor money driven companies.
  - gregpilling 12y ago
    They have money to hire staff to do PR. Bootstrapped companies are often cash strapped for a long time before they can afford PR people. Founders are told to do it, but reality of running a company gets in the way.
- danyork 12y ago
  And curiously, Microsoft is replacing "Lync" with "Skype for Business".... although I'm not sure if that is a simple renaming of the existing client.
  - gcb0 12y ago
    aparently it is just a rename. i don't deal with any clients that use it anymore, but last i heard they are just adding lync support to skype, and decided to kill one of the brands. cleverly they killed lync.
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      They did say they would make the Lync client more like Skype. Which is insane, as Skype is one of the worst pieces of software I use on a day-to-day basis. Lync is a far cleaner, nicer, client. Also, ffs, "Skype for Business".
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Not in my experience - I've been to several companies using Skype as the primary in-office communication tool and I find it really annoying. Skype is resource-heavy, poor on features and keeps breaking on Linux (management uses Windows, so it doesn't care, but I'm a dev...). I personally refused to use Skype this time (after it kept repeatedly failing on my Ubuntu machine) and made everyone send an e-mail or write me on Facebook if they need something. Works well (though I feel I'm missing on some amount of in-office chat).
- eitally 12y ago
  I find it more surprising that you'll allowed to use FB for work.
  - darklajid 12y ago
    I came to say the same thing. With a twist. Using FB at work is one thing, using FB to communicate with your coworkers another. FB is 'private' for me (as funny as that sounds - there's nothing really private on FB of course, but it's the social life outside of work that I refer to here). Not corporate.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I work in a relatively small company, everyone here has a private Facebook account, and I see no way in which Facebook chat is in any way worse than Skype. Both are closed-source, privately-owned, centralized servivces. But only one of them I tend to have opened anyway, as I use it to communicate with most of the people I know, and I can use it through Emacs when I find myself too distracted by the vanilla version.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
skrebbel 12y ago
We're builing that. Give it a month or so, will spam HN. Want to beta test? :-)
- uncletaco 12y ago
  Yes.
- nullrouted 12y ago
  Yes
darklajid 12y ago
Single data point: I open Skype for one occasion: Monday night, gaming with friends that - for the lack of a better term - "don't know better" (I'd prefer TeamSpeak or Mumble for Gaming - or any other voice chat that doesn't require a G+ account really). Skype is slow. Ugly. And worst of all: It shoves ads in my face on multiple levels (popups, banners etc). So far I keep it for this weekly use case, but I hope that I will leave it behind 'real soon now'™.
- hellbanner 12y ago
  Your Skype shows ads? I've never seen ads on Skype.
  - jusuchin 12y ago
    Mine does...
  - darklajid 12y ago
    See my sibling. Yes it does. There seem to be ways to make that go away (null listing hosts either directly in the hosts file or - on Windows - in the Internet Connection Settings). Maybe. Before I'd use that app for anything of value, outside of my Mondays .. I'd try these approaches.
  - melvinmt 12y ago
    Not on Mac but it does on Windows.
    - jonalmeida 12y ago
      That's not true at all. I have ads shoved in my face on my Mac continuously. It's bulky & ugly to use (UX-wise), so it's only used for business. I make myself available on nth number of services because they people I want to talk to are spread across them; Skype is not one of them.
  - gurkendoktor 12y ago
    I have never seen a single ad on Skype (Windows, Mac, iOS) when I use my old account, where I have regularly bought SkypeOut credits. When I created a second account for work with a new client, suddenly ads popped up everywhere.
davedx 12y ago
Nope, as a freelancer with a few remote clients here and there, I find almost every client uses Skype. Even the big corp I'm currently contracting for uses Skype for interviews and inter-company communications. So do most of our vendors.
driverdan 12y ago
I've never used Skype for anything personal, only for business communications and only when the other party required it.
fredsters_s 12y ago
this is clearly not b2b
fredguth 12y ago
Hey, I don't think you are an outlier. I use Skype for business and the many SMB I work with all use Skype as well. The Skype target audience is the consumer not the SMB. Lync is great, as Jabber is great, but they are all for the Big Fortune 500, not the SMB. I am still looking... and will welcome new "Skype Killer" initiatives. Despite of that, I don't think Wire is it. I downloaded the app and it is quite awful to use. We need a "Skype Killer" with better usability for business, not only a pretty screen and a good marketing landing page.

gcb0 12y ago

i like to joke there are two types of tech companies, mutually exclusive. - profit driven - investor money driven skype is a profit company. wire is clearly investor money driven. So while your example is valid, i don't think they want to displace the corporate consumer that creates the bulky of skype profit. It probably wants to go after the users that uses snapchat/wasup/etc for free, with little revenue besides what is necessary for a "revenue" round A/B/C/IPO deck, and get investor money/get acquired. PS: while skype is a consumer product, its job is not to drive revenue, but to advertise the corporate solution: Lync. Lync gets microsoft 2bi/yr, while skype peak at 600m/yr in a good year. 600m sounds good, but not when you paid over 8bi for it.

rplnt 12y ago
Sadly, we mostly hear about those investor money driven companies.
- gregpilling 12y ago
  They have money to hire staff to do PR. Bootstrapped companies are often cash strapped for a long time before they can afford PR people. Founders are told to do it, but reality of running a company gets in the way.
danyork 12y ago
And curiously, Microsoft is replacing "Lync" with "Skype for Business".... although I'm not sure if that is a simple renaming of the existing client.
- gcb0 12y ago
  aparently it is just a rename. i don't deal with any clients that use it anymore, but last i heard they are just adding lync support to skype, and decided to kill one of the brands. cleverly they killed lync.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    They did say they would make the Lync client more like Skype. Which is insane, as Skype is one of the worst pieces of software I use on a day-to-day basis. Lync is a far cleaner, nicer, client. Also, ffs, "Skype for Business".

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Not in my experience - I've been to several companies using Skype as the primary in-office communication tool and I find it really annoying. Skype is resource-heavy, poor on features and keeps breaking on Linux (management uses Windows, so it doesn't care, but I'm a dev...). I personally refused to use Skype this time (after it kept repeatedly failing on my Ubuntu machine) and made everyone send an e-mail or write me on Facebook if they need something. Works well (though I feel I'm missing on some amount of in-office chat).

eitally 12y ago
I find it more surprising that you'll allowed to use FB for work.
- darklajid 12y ago
  I came to say the same thing. With a twist. Using FB at work is one thing, using FB to communicate with your coworkers another. FB is 'private' for me (as funny as that sounds - there's nothing really private on FB of course, but it's the social life outside of work that I refer to here). Not corporate.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I work in a relatively small company, everyone here has a private Facebook account, and I see no way in which Facebook chat is in any way worse than Skype. Both are closed-source, privately-owned, centralized servivces. But only one of them I tend to have opened anyway, as I use it to communicate with most of the people I know, and I can use it through Emacs when I find myself too distracted by the vanilla version.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

skrebbel 12y ago

We're builing that. Give it a month or so, will spam HN. Want to beta test? :-)

uncletaco 12y ago
Yes.
nullrouted 12y ago
Yes

darklajid 12y ago

Single data point: I open Skype for one occasion: Monday night, gaming with friends that - for the lack of a better term - "don't know better" (I'd prefer TeamSpeak or Mumble for Gaming - or any other voice chat that doesn't require a G+ account really). Skype is slow. Ugly. And worst of all: It shoves ads in my face on multiple levels (popups, banners etc). So far I keep it for this weekly use case, but I hope that I will leave it behind 'real soon now'™.

hellbanner 12y ago
Your Skype shows ads? I've never seen ads on Skype.
- jusuchin 12y ago
  Mine does...
- darklajid 12y ago
  See my sibling. Yes it does. There seem to be ways to make that go away (null listing hosts either directly in the hosts file or - on Windows - in the Internet Connection Settings). Maybe. Before I'd use that app for anything of value, outside of my Mondays .. I'd try these approaches.
- melvinmt 12y ago
  Not on Mac but it does on Windows.
  - jonalmeida 12y ago
    That's not true at all. I have ads shoved in my face on my Mac continuously. It's bulky & ugly to use (UX-wise), so it's only used for business. I make myself available on nth number of services because they people I want to talk to are spread across them; Skype is not one of them.
- gurkendoktor 12y ago
  I have never seen a single ad on Skype (Windows, Mac, iOS) when I use my old account, where I have regularly bought SkypeOut credits. When I created a second account for work with a new client, suddenly ads popped up everywhere.

davedx 12y ago

Nope, as a freelancer with a few remote clients here and there, I find almost every client uses Skype. Even the big corp I'm currently contracting for uses Skype for interviews and inter-company communications. So do most of our vendors.

driverdan 12y ago

I've never used Skype for anything personal, only for business communications and only when the other party required it.

fredsters_s 12y ago

this is clearly not b2b

fredguth 12y ago

Hey, I don't think you are an outlier. I use Skype for business and the many SMB I work with all use Skype as well. The Skype target audience is the consumer not the SMB. Lync is great, as Jabber is great, but they are all for the Big Fortune 500, not the SMB. I am still looking... and will welcome new "Skype Killer" initiatives. Despite of that, I don't think Wire is it. I downloaded the app and it is quite awful to use. We need a "Skype Killer" with better usability for business, not only a pretty screen and a good marketing landing page.