Over the past several months we’ve seen a number of notable Skype advocates expressing criticism of Skype in public, including Martin and Jan Geirnaert.
The latest comes from Ted Wallingford who says he is dropping Skype because it slows his Macbook down too much. I think the following is even more significant:
Performance isn’t the only reason, though. … very few of the contacts I rely on Skype for daily aren’t also in my Gizmo Project contact list.
There you go. Switching cost is proportional to the size of my contact list, just as it is for IM. If I have a small contact list, or my important contacts are already also using the next “free” Skype clone, then switching cost is not very high.
I don’t autoload Skype any more. I haven’t two or three months now.
I wondered if it was just me, so I’ve begun logging in 2-3 times a day to see who among my contacts are online. What’s striking is how few are online at any given point on time.
In short, Skype has become irrelevant for almost everything I do.
There are now so many options for quality cheap calls that Skype isn’t as exciting as it was when it first hit the market a few years ago.
It’s been off my computer for several months now.
The computer makes a crappy telephone. (Sorry, if I offend all of you Skype lovers out there, but I gotta call it as I see it.) Where’s my headset? Click, click, ring ring… it’s a very aggressive and unfamiliar interface, for many, if not most, people.