Skype was first introduced in an article in the New York Time on October 12, 2003. The article was titled "Sir, to Whom May I Direct Your Free Call?" written by Nicholas Thompson. In the article Thompson discusses how these two obscure Swedish men and a few programmers from Estonia created a way to communicate through the internet for free. By the time the article was written more than a million people had downloaded Skype and were using it. The goal was to make it a "Global Telephone Company". Skype utilizes VoIP or voice over internet protocol to turn your computer into a phone. The comparison was to whether Skype would completely destroy the phone business, but the author doesn't think that the phone companies should worry. The earliest ProQuest hit was only 2 days before the article was released. This article was released in a journal titled The Chronicle of Higher Education. It essentially said the same thing as the news article. The difference was this article talked started off with information on Skype's use on college campuses. It was be used by tons of students that officials from these schools had no idea how prevalent it was.
The goal of Skype was to talk for free and that is what it evolved in to. Today Skype is still used by many people to connect with friends or family living abroad. It is a simple way to bypass long distance calling fees. It has evolved to include video as well now and even can connect with your personal Facebook to make it easier to utilize by everyone.
Last Day of Discussion Section! Yay!
Last Day of Discussion Section! Yay!
1 comment:
Joe,
I think it is really interesting how Skype has ended up exactly how it was set out to be used, as you mentioned in your post. If I were a phone company during the launch of Skype, I would have been frightened for my field as well! It is interesting, however, that phone calls are still much more prevalent than Skype (or even its Apple counterpart, FaceTime). I also feel that Skype has grown from a social application to a more professional one. Many job interviews today are hosted via Skype and I feel it has become a huge asset to companies. I am very curious to see if Skype and FaceTime do ever reach above phone calls or texting for the most common source of communication.
Thanks for posting,
Mary
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