Communication
Yes, Virginia, There Are Men Using Facebook
Texting may be the most popular mode of communication between men, but for men under forty, Facebook beats out phone, …
Skype Tries Its Hand at VoIP for Business
Skype has formally announced its newest product for business users, Skype Connect. Skype Connect , formally Skype SIP, is Skype’s Skype play at the IP-enabled PBX and Unified Communications (UC) market. With Skype Connect, businesses can now integrate the service into their existing PBX systems.In addition to making outgoing calls at Skype rates from desktop phones, Skype Connect also lets businesses receive phone calls from other Skype users, landline or mobile phones, or from other phones on the corporate PBX. Also, Skype Connect can be configured to route calls to mobile numbers.This video gives an overview of just what Skype Connect does: Skype is one of the most visible players in the consumer VoIP space, but it has a much smaller presence in the business world.Skype first launched its Skype Connect Beta in March 2009, and according to its business blog now has more than 2,400 global customers . That’s not a bad start, but it pales when compared to some of the bigger players in this field.Skype also faces stiff competition, not just from companies like Cisco — which has its own IP-PBX offerings — but from startups in the same space, including Bandwidth.com. Bandwidth.com offers SIP Trunking for businesses that want a cost-effective, in-house IP-PBX, and its Phonebooth Free and Phonebooth OnDemand products directly target SMBs.Skype’s advantage, of course, is going to be that it has brand recognition with new customers. For small businesses that are transitioning to a phone system, IP or otherwise, for the first time, the Skype brand should have its own set of advantages.Likewise, while other hosted IP-PBX systems have click-to-talk systems like Skype’s own interface (meaning users can initiate a phone call from a button on the Internet Internet ), Skype is a ubiquitous part of many consumer and business desktops.Skype’s disadvantage, however, is that because it has been such a consumer-centric service, it’s unproven in the business support and infrastructure arena. Skype offers a new dedicated customer support option for Skype Connect users, but it’s going to also off-load some of its support to channel partners and VARs. Depending on the business, this may not be ideal.Also, we find ourselves confused about Skype Connect’s pricing plan. Rather than bundling together plans with minute buckets or extensions, Skype is charging by the minute and by what it calls “channels.”Incoming calls are free, and outgoing calls are charged according to Skype’s standard rates of 2.1 cents per minute. Users will also need to pay $6.95 a month per channel. A channel is the number of concurrent calls you want to make or receive at once. So if you want to have five different extensions that can all be in use at the same time, you’ll pay $34.75.We really think it would be in Skype’s best interest to create some unified or bundled pricing plans for its business offerings, if only to make comparison shopping easier.What do you think of Skype’s formal entrance into the corporate VoIP space? Let us know in the comments. For more Tech coverage: Follow Mashable Tech on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Tech channel Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad
MySpace Now Letting Users Syndicate Status Updates to Facebook
After having launched integrations with Twitter and other sites, MySpace has launched a new form of Facebook integration today. Now, it’s easy for MySpace users to syndicate their status updates on Facebook as well. The UI is available to users in a drop-down on MySpace’s status publisher, beneath the Twitter syndication feature that MySpace introduced last year. As part of this, MySpace is also asking users for extended permissions for publishing to their walls — but is is also asking for access to their Photos and Videos on Facebook, and their Facebook data when they’re not using the application. In other words, MySpace is asking for permission to access lots of valuable social data from Facebook, but we don’t yet know how it might use that data in its products. We should note that Facebook and MySpace have been talking about some sort of deal since last fall, as we and others were hearing . Then-chief executive Owen Van Natta told The Telegraph that MySpace saw value in Facebook for its content plans. “We are in talks with Facebook, and other sites, about how we could partner with them. Partnerships are going to be a big part of our strategy moving forward as a lot of value can be derived from them. Facebook is about core communications with your friendship network, whereas MySpace is about congregating around popular content with people who share your interests.” The MySpace blog post on the matters has that same theme today: “Sync with Facebook allows users to keep their friends on Facebook up to date on everything, including: sharing songs, latest photos, fun game apps, and more.” Perhaps MySpace will attract some avid Facebook social gamers through news feed updates? The integration could bring new usage scenarios to MySpace, but also reinforces the need for MySpace to provide a differentiated social service in order to lure users away. Van Natta is now at Zynga, the leading social gaming developer on Facebook and MySpace’s platforms; Mike Jones is now CEO at MySpace, apparently pushing the current integration forward – and MySpace still has considerable traffic .