Updates over Media, Marketing en Publishing
Skype has long been talking about the different ways that it could monetize its calling and messaging platform. Now, with Microsoft as its owner and 280 million monthly users passing through its voice, video and messaging network, it looks like it is getting serious.
Skype faced a fairly serious security threat today, thanks to a flaw in the system that allowed people to sign up with email addresses already in use by other users and then force password resets for any accounts associated with those emails. Reset tokens could be delivered to the Skype client itself, meaning people didn’t need access to email accounts to reset passwords associated with them.
In case you thought Skype may be slowing down while settling into being a part of Microsoft and recently celebrating its ninth birthday, here are some numbers that seem to indicate otherwise: Last week, Skype reached a new peak of 45,469,977 concurrent users online, part of a strong run for the peer-to-peer voice/video/chat service this year. Overall it has seen an increase of 70% so far in 2012, compared to growth of around 30% for the same period in 2011.
This is a follow-up post to Part 1 on the same topic. If you have not read Part 1, I suggest you start there. The chart below includes my assessment of the social enterprise software market. The size of each bubble reflects my estimate on the size of each sub-sector, while the axes represent the relative […]
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Salesforce has officially closed its acquisition of Buddy Media, but it looks like it is far from closing the door on what it intends to do in the space of enterprise and social communication. Today the company announced Social Communities, a private social networking service where users can engage with customers and partners using some of the features that have largely become commonplace in this era of social media. These include user profiles, real-time feeds, trending topics, recommendations and influence measurement. The platform also incorporates the cloud-based business processes and database services that form the core of Salesforce’s business today. Set for a limited pilot in the autumn 2012, the service will be available generally in the second half of 2013.
The move looks like a clear salvo from Salesforce to competitors that are also converging on the nexus of social tools and enterprise services. They include Microsoft — which already has Sharepoint and is upping the ante now with Yammer; as well as smaller companies like Huddle and Hootsuite, which respectively offer cloud-based collaboration platforms and social media dashboards to serve the two sides of enterprises’ social media needs.
Lees meerAccording to a recent report from IDC, social enterprise software will grow from $800 million in 2011 to $4.5 billion by 2016. Despite Facebook’s greedy IPO last May, and disappointing Q2 results from both Facebook and Zynga, social enterprise software is doing fine. Six of the sixteen M&A transactions in the sector during the past 2.5 years occurred since Facebook’s IPO. These six transactions totaled […]
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Yammer, the enterprise social networking company that was recently bought by Microsoft for $1.2 billion, is getting ready to add a new instant messaging feature called Online Now to its main service, enabling users to chat to each other in real time. Online Now will sit alongside existing services that let users post status updates and media as well as send private messages.
The feature was spotted earlier today by TNW, and we have now confirmed exactly what is happening with Yammer itself, including the name: “We will be announcing the chat feature through a press release in a couple of weeks as part of our summer release,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
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In May of last year, Microsoft acquired everybody’s favorite VoIP and chat provider, Skype, for a cool $8.5 billion. It was a big move for Microsoft and a landmark deal, which it officially closed in October. Yet, as Frederic pointed out earlier this week, other than getting to wear the brand’s pin on its lapel, Microsoft has been quiet about its plans for Skype.
However, as part of its quarterly earnings announcement this afternoon, we got a glimpse into just how well Skype has been performing since it joined MSFT’s ranks. One notable milestone to come out of those stats? Users logged 115 billion minutes of calls on Skype over the quarter — a number that was up 50 percent over the prior quarter.
Lees meerMichel van der Bel (52) is sinds drie jaar COO Greater China Region bij Microsoft. Hij is de man die de ambities van de multinational in onder meer China moet waarmaken. “We hebben kostbare tijd verloren.”
Lees meerI thought I would just provide a bit of summary on my recent article, so people understand where I am coming from when I say that Facebook is toast. 1. It does not matter how many people are on Facebook. From a revenue standpoint, every Facebook user is currently worth $5.00 to the bottom line. […]
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