I think it is about the magic and importance of human voice communication. We have had a hard time understanding the role of the Internet in our conversations. I think it is also about what a telephone call means to us—and I think that includes almost all of us, not just those of a certain age. Certainly in developed countries we know what a phone call means. While we pay for the expectation of a reliable conversation, it seems almost like a basic human right.
That must be it. You know Skype is not for emergency calling. It is not the same as your telephone. You know it depends on the Internet and all the occasional frailties that brings. But for many it had become a fundamental means of voice communications. In our minds it became inseparable from phone service. Not in fact, but in our perception which, of course, equals reality. If you are Skype, that is a strong position to hold. –A remarkable position to hold considering what it is built on.
Even more remarkably many who are not users of Skype speak of it as a phone service. Maybe that is because it is easy to talk about that way, but now we have not only a strong user community, but a much larger community that accepts Skype, not for what it is, but what we think it is. The criticism of Skype’s handling of the “service outage” seems in some part a result of Skype/eBay not knowing how to handle the role they had assumed.
It would have been easier if a storm had taken down some network infrastructure. That is something we all could relate to as a phone service issue. As hard as it may be to find someone to talk to a phone company, we CAN do that. Apparently it never dawned on us that you could not just call up Skype as you would a phone company. It may have never occurred to Skype that you would want this relationship. It was certainly never practical.
There are plenty of lessons to go around here, a pundit’s field day for sure. When it is all said and done, remember that Skype, and other similar services, are not the phone company. Internet communications offers more than any phone connection—and it also offers less. Let’s now enjoy each for what it is.