I'm sure most of you are well aware that I use both Skype and Gizmo for VOIP, but I prefer Gizmo for call quality and innovation in their offerings. This weekend Skype had a huge outage that left its users abandoned. Things are back to normal on the system, but in the chaos of their outage, Gizmo saw a 400% increase in traffic, sales, and downloads. When I heard this, I was pretty shocked.
Most users of innovative technology such as VOIP seek the highest quality of product available on the market. They are willing to go with another provider to try it out if it is free or little cost. I've never felt that Skype was the best product but its ubiquity forces any player who wants to stay connected to use the product. But like any other product that reaches the masses, entrenched users get hooked on the product and use it for familiarity and because they are not empowered enough to change or seek better products.
I've got lots of evidence for this theory. When I go to China, I find that Skype is the main player in VOIP there. The Chinese pronounce it is "Skype-eee". I've seen grandchildren in the USA install it for their grandparents in China. It is all the rage in China. That grandparent will never change from using Skype-eee until someone does it for him or unless he hears from all his relatives who are on Skype-eee that there is something better.
The spike in Gizmo traffic means that users depend on VOIP for vital communication so much so that they are willing to try another product. I suspect that many of the new users of Gizmo are entrenched users who just needed an impetus to change or try and other product, not the sophisticated user that has already tried it out.
I'm not happy that Skype went down because I think that while it might be good for Gizmo, it is bad for the internet when vital web services have brownouts. Lots of research firms are predicting that something like this will happen in the future due to the increasing use of video streaming that it hogging bandwidth. Things like this make us all take a step backwards rather than forwards. The good news is that there are independent players like Gizmo who are always nibbling at the heels of the 800 pound gorilla. I hope there will be many many more than come along and transform the VOIP space even more.
The Internet as a Platform Will Continuously Evolve
Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA franchise, and Chairman of HDNet, the richest blogger in the world claims The Internet is Dean and Boring days ago in his blog. Why? Here is his reason: Every new technological, mechanical or intellectual breakthrough has its day, days, months and years. But they don’t rule forever. That’s the reality… Just like wheels, printing presses, cars, TV, radio, electricity, water…Its very difficult to develop applications on a platform that is ever changing…
Well, Mark Cuban draws a wrong conclusion though his observations are right. Why?
1. The slow adoption of high-speed broadband during past 5 years in the US is not a problem of the Internet, or the proof of the Internet innovation stalls, it is a matter of domestic policy issues
2. From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, the Internet has demonstrated its continuous evolution as a great platform in endorsing lot of application-level innovations, such as Wiki, Blog, Social Networking, Podcast, just to name a few
3. The continuously evolving of the Internet is good instead of bad, actually the innovation of the Internet itself is not fast enough, and that is why we call for Internet 2.0 to serve upcoming Web 3.0 better
Frontier Blog - search but not REsearch
http://www.hwswworld.com/wp
Posted by: edward | August 27, 2007 at 01:13 AM