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Facebook Wants To Buy Skype
An anonymous reader writes "Remember when we learned that Facebook had resumed talks with Skype? Well, it turns out that Facebook is considering buying Skype outright. 'Skype is reportedly talking to Facebook about some sort of deal. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been involved in internal discussions about buying Skype, while Facebook also reached out to the Luxembourg-based company about forming a joint venture.'"
If they buy Skype, they should change their name to Phonebook.
Seriously, Skype has been a grudgingly-necessary eyesore for years, and yet we don't seem to have a widely-accepted and/or functionally-equivalent OSS project in the wild. How can this be?
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Skype was huge way before their android and apple apps. Just sayin...
It seems that Google is looking at buying it too, which I'm hoping for since they're much more likely to open things up.
I'm not sure how to feel about this one. On one hand Skype as a company could do with a huge amount of improvement. Their support is frankly the worst I've ever dealt with from a company of their size, and their software is only one release away from breaking again (and never worked correctly on Android).
I don't have any love for Facebook as a company, but frankly I have such a low opinion of Skype that it couldn't get too much worse, at least I hope. The funny thing is that I pay Skype hundreds of dollars a year for a service which is only borderline passable, but just like the telcos they're the only game in town, so there is no motovation for them to improve.
If Google released a competing product tomorrow I'd switch. And, no, Google Talk is NOT remotely comparable to Skype.
Skype was huge way before their android and apple apps. Just sayin...
Agreed: Skype became "the" thing way before it found a life on SmartPhones.
I have to agree with the earlier poster... I'm sure there are more open solutions out there, but I've yet to hear of anything large enough to even be considered a blip on Skype's radar.
If you slap an Asterisk box on a static IP on the open internet, and then link your POTS phone number to your asterisk box through a directory service like E164.org, the 4 other guys who do that with asterisk can dial your phone number and their asterisk servers will realize that you're doing that too and call you over a data connection instead of through the traditional phone system. I'm pretty sure Asterisk can also initiate video conferencing sessions.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
XMPP video with Pidgin.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
How can this be?
It's simple: Skype is to Ekiga as Windows was to GNU/Linux circa 1998. When end users think of VoIP, they thing of Skype, not Ekiga, and only people who are both technically sophisticated and who "get it" (that is, people who want to avoid proprietary software) are the ones using Ekiga. To make matters worse, Ekiga for Windows is poorly supported, poorly functioning, and difficult to configure -- so GNU/Linux users who want to communicate with Windows users are left in a difficult position.
Palm trees and 8
It's not just about the POTS service, though. I rarely, if ever, see folks using it for voice-only calls. People use it for (in my experience):
1) Text-only chat (which is bat-guano-insane, IMHO)
2) Video chats
#2 sees the most use in my family and company circles. If we want voice-only, we call the other person's cell phone.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
It's simple, though -- a Skype-replacement just needs to end up on Leo Laporte's desk. He and his TWiT network cohorts have been ragging on Skype for years, and yet they continue to use it because it
1) works on durn near every OS out there
2) is easy to acquire and install for potential collaborators
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Anyone at Facebook in a position to know anything about any such possible deal is not legally allowed to say anything. If Facebook isn't dumb, they started any discussions with a confidentiality agreement due to their legal requirements not to say anything. Also, since Skype is privately owned, the majority owner would have nothing to gain by publicizing the talks.
That means that whoever is talking to the press about this is either:
1. some other party with a motivation for derailing the deal, such as eBay (a minority owner of Skype),
B. an insider at Facebook illegally attempting to manipulate the stock price, or
III. somebody with no clue who wants to seem cool to the business press.
I am officially gone from
One reason is that Skype has always worked well even if both call participants are behind a NAT. Which other software had this at the time Skype was launched?
All the software pieces exist as OSS projects but it's not only the software that made Skype big. It's been the company behind it that signed contracts that let me connect with standard phone networks all around the world. I can call POTS numbers from within Skype, I can get a virtual phone number so phones can call my Skype client. I can redirect my Skype account to a phone number or vice versa, with voice mail. That's something that a software project cannot do: you have to be a company and start competing with Skype.
Adam Connor with Facebook previously stated the following; apparently in reference to gaining access to the Chinese market.
"Maybe we are going to censor our content in some countries” ” We have dealt with many unpleasant situations because we allow too much freedom of speech in the countries that have not experimented this until now" http://www.gev.com/2011/04/facebook-and-freedom-of-speech/
I know for a fact many users and businesses use Skype because it's encrypted end-to-end. Now, that may have already been compromised some time ago and thus no longer secure in China. But, I for one believe that Facebook would hand over the keys to the Chinese government in a heartbeat. I doubt Google would as there's already a bit of contention between those two.
Life is not for the lazy.
Don't worry, they'll recommend that you keep Skype open in the background... For added connectivity.
I'd rather put Skype in the hands of GLaDOS.
List of Open Source VOIP Software. Feel free to verify or modify the source to your liking. I think Ekiga sounds like a nice starting point, though I don't know how secure it is. It even supports calls to normal phones, so it seems I was wrong about that being a massive barrier.
Personally I don't care about trustworthiness or security in voice/video chat, since I've only ever used it for chatting to friends. For business use then being assured of confidentiality is more important of course.
which is totally what she said
Guess it's time to start looking for alternatives apart from google which isn't rolled out in the UK yet I have no Idea.
If, like me, you do not want all your private information "integrated" with Facebook and its ever-changing use of private information, maybe this is the time to contact Skype (maybe via posts to their blog?) and letting them know how you feel about having all your calling information and other Skype data "integrated" with facebook. I for one have long ago deleted my Facebook profile after I started seeing how pervasive their tracking and data agglomeration on individual has become and how lax they are about sharing that data with other vendors and application developers. I share Julian Assange's assertion that Facebook is "near-evil" and cannot imagine continuing using Skype if it is a Facebook extension.
Seriously, Skype has been a grudgingly-necessary eyesore for years, and yet we don't seem to have a widely-accepted and/or functionally-equivalent OSS project in the wild. How can this be?
There are plenty of OSS alternatives out there...
All sorts of VoIP softphones, text chat programs, videoconferencing apps...
But that's kind of the problem. Skype is a single company and a single app. There isn't any confusion or choice. You say "I'm on Skype" and folks know how they can get in touch with you. You say "I use Ekiga" and they look at you like you've grown a third eye.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
There isn't really one. Ekiga is close, but if you've ever tried to use it you'll know it's really tempramental. Pidgin's voice and video support is somewhat popular but I've no idea how well that works either, though it does supposedly interoperate nicely with Google Talk on Windows.
I like Skype -- I'm a paying customer. I like Facebook. I wouldn't trust Facebook (the company) with anything that I don't mind becoming 100% public, including my credit card, and use it with that knowledge in mind. I am not necessarily interested in Skypeing with my Facebook friends or the awkwardness of socially networking with my Skype contacts (who are mostly business collaborators). [One would hope that everyone has learned the lesson of Google Buzz].
I don't like the fact that the Internet is turning into AOL 2012.
If it happens, I'll stop using Skype. I'm guessing I'm not the only one with that sentiment, either.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
In development: http://planet.gnu.org/gnutelephony/?p=14
There were also hoards of VoIP companies offering those services for under half the price charged by Skype, although some bundled the in-dial and out-dial. In fact, there are only a very few marketing heavy VoIP providers like Vonage charging more than Skype. The real issues are :
(1) Skype's user experience obliterates every other VoIP provider : Download & run Skype, make account, done. No tweak this setting if you use symmetric NAT. No please pay us first. etc.
(2) Skype has NAT traversal that afaik equals or beats any other VoIP software & provider combo. In fact, they use almost exactly the same NAT traversal tricks, but they may ask other clients to provide TURN (relay) when STUN fails, and maybe their STUN servers are better too. TURN gets expensive if the calls are all free.
(3) Skpye simplifies finding people you know who use Skype. And they've always encouraged people to talk to strangers, making it more likely that your friends already use Skype.
(4) Skype's encryption gives small businesses greater confidence.
If you wish to compete with Skype, you must (a) match them on PTSN price while offering awesome STUN and TURN, (b) match or beat them at friend finding, (c) beat them on encryption, i.e. use an open source client, preferably Zfone, and (d) offer "something more".
I think the logical "something more" might be encrypted friend-to-friend file sharing, perhaps with discussion threads ala facebook's photos. All IM clients offer file transfers, but no popular ones offer file sharing.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
http://www.linphone.org/
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Where is the FLOSS alternative to Facebook? By this time were supposed to be using Diaspora or one of the several other competing projects
With EIGHTEEN public diaspora pods available, each with TENS of seeds, I think it's safe to say that everybody who's anybody is on Diaspora by now.
Really? Are we going to stick with this "change the source yourself" argument?
*sigh*
I tried using Ekiga... couldn't get it to work between a Windows and a Linux client. I wanted to video-chat with my wife and kids while on business trips. Then tried several video chats with no consistent success. Grudgingly tried Skype, and it works great. I now can video chat with my parents across the country as well.
Sorry, but Skype even on Linux just worked.
I have a CS degree (from way back) but I am no longer a programmer. I'm not about to pick it up just to get video chat to work.
If Facebook buys it, it will make me sad because I abhor Facebook.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The difference is what they sell to get that profit.
Skype sells time to use their service for web<->phone calls. Their product is their product.
Facebook sells their users' information to advertisers. Their users are their product.
This is the problem: In order to make calls between two people behind a NAT work, skype (ab)uses other, completely unrelated, clients to get the connection going. This would never fly in an open application because the helper feature would be immediately removed or disabled by the "other" clients.
This was a huge discussion point when skype first came out. If you got turned into a skype "supernode" it would eat your internet connection. Universities had major problems with this. But apparently slashdot has forgotten it.
But as a closed piece of software skype can require you participate as a "helper".
Yes, this means an essential feature of skype, the one that makes it "just work", directly violates a central tenet of FLOSS software, full user choice.
If skype had done a bad job, this would have killed them. But it turns out they got everything else mostly right, so they were able to overcome this stigma. For example, they actually provide specially modified clients to universities to mitigate this issue.