MySpace, Skype announce partnership (2007)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21341042/ns/technology_and_science-internet/t/myspace-skype-announce-partnership/

by timjahn • 15 years ago

213 42 15 years ago

msnbc.msn.com

city41• 15 years ago

Features alone do not a good product make.

flyt• 15 years ago

"Some pundits are complaining that the technology is not new, but that’s besides the point. Case in point: at MySpace we launched what Zuckerberg is announcing in 2007 (try googling “myspace skype partnership”), and MySpace also had one-on-one video chat back in 2004. The point is that people weren’t really ready for it back then—now is the time, and Facebook has the user base. The large user base (750 million) paired with a simple integration of arguably the best voice/video tech (Skype) is what makes this news."

-Tom Anderson, founder of MySpace

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/06/zuckerberg-first-public-res...

kenjackson5• 15 years ago

Tom gets it. One of the problems with experience is that you have, well umm, experience. It's the unfortunate ability to say, "We did video chat X years ago. Didn't work out, it's a bad idea."

I've seen this type of thinking first hand. You must understand why it didn't work before, and what is different now. I can see people at MS saying, "The iPad will never work. We tried tablets w/o keyboards back in 2002 and everyone wanted convertibles. It'll never work."

Little differences can be a big deal. Experience is not useful w/o the analysis to put your experience in perspective.

timjahn7• 15 years ago

Agreed. I love Tom's overall tone in that article.

msbarnett• 15 years ago

While it's certainly true that past performance of a technology is not a flawless indicator of future success, I'm not clear on what makes "now" the time for video chat.

With the iPad, Apple's key insight was that tablets had sucked because the OS hadn't been meticulously tuned to afford use on tablets. I'm curious as to what people think the key insight is that Facebook is bringing to video chat?

From what I'm reading here the TC author seems to think that Joe Average User wasn't using skype or stickam or any of the previous offerings for video chat because the user base wasn't there. I don't know about that, because all of my friends have had skype forever and I can count the number of times I've video chatted with them on one finger. I feel like I wasn't using those, and won't be using this, not because the user base wasn't FIXNUM huge, but because it feels intrusive and I don't want to feel like I have to shower, shave, and put on presentable clothes just to tool around on Facebook.

barista• 15 years ago

That's like Microsoft saying that they did tablets well before Apple did iPad. Though true, the experience of thoese two devices is vastly different. Windows 8 looks very promising though...

MartinCron• 15 years ago

I once worked at a smallish company that had been around for 20 years. In that time, they had tried just about everything and had failed at most things. It was very frustrating to work with people who considered things like test automation, normalized database structures, not copying and pasting to be discredited concepts.

jhuckestein• 15 years ago

It's a different feature. The skype button on myspace would bring up skype and require the other side to have a skype account.

The Facebook feature runs in the browser and guides the receiving side through the process of enabling in-browser video calls.

That said, I agree that Facebook's announcement is not that big of a deal.

timjahn7• 15 years ago

On the contrary, I think it's a big deal. Facebook has unprecedented reach.

Grandmas everywhere will now be playing bridge over video chat. :)

cookiecaper• 15 years ago

Does Facebook have group video chat now? Not even Skype proper supports that afaik.

BvS2• 15 years ago

According to this article it wasn't about video but free Internet phone calls.

As Tom Anderson (founder of Myspace) stated on Google+ (https://plus.google.com/112063946124358686266/posts/g2zmxn1L...) Myspace had one-on-one video chat back in 2004 but I guess without the help of Skype and without the necessary broadband penetration it wasn't all that useful.

timjahn7• 15 years ago

Still blows my mind that they had video chat that far back.

VladRussian2• 15 years ago

first time i saw video from camera being immediately rendered inside a window on computer screen in 1995 (it was in Russia where we were technically noticeably behind the West) It still blows my mind what video chat is still not ubiquitous, and that a company adding video chat feature is a matter to notice.

revorad• 15 years ago

2004 wasn't that far back.

timjahn7• 15 years ago

Just noticed the title of this post changed from what I originally entered.

I was unaware somebody was able to do this. Who has the ability?

(I don't mind, just curious.)

pilgrim689• 15 years ago

It used to say "3 years ago" right?

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That has some guidelines on titles and mentions that "the editors may rewrite it."... perhaps they didn't like that you used the number 3, and preferred 2007 because that has more meaning?

timjahn7• 15 years ago

Ah, oops. I promise I'll read the rules next time. ;)

snorkel• 15 years ago

Next feature announcement from Facebook: ghetto bling wallpapers

ericfrenkiel• 15 years ago

execution execution execution

T_S_• 15 years ago

unwords $ replicate 3 "timing, execution"

haydenevans• 15 years ago

How many actual active users does myspace still have at this point?

MySpace, Skype announce partnership (2007)

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