I was introduced to Skype about eight months ago and loved it immediately. It's consumer proposition is pretty simple: talk to people anywhere in the world for free. All you need to make a conversation work is a broadband connection and a download for each person. It is easy to say that long distance bills are going to zero but once you try Skype, you really do realize that long distance bills are going to zero. The quality is nearly as good as your landline and way, way better than wireless. If you feel that audio isn't enough, buy a webcam and use MSN IM with it and presto, you have free video conferencing from your home. The only problem I have with Skype is that my computer is not as portable as my phone. In other words, I can't walk around the house while I make and receive my Skype calls. But pretty soon some clever company will build a home or wireless phone that can jump on my wireless network and accept and make Skype calls.
The problem I have with Skype is that it just added another user ID to my life. Allow me to list the ways that people can contact me: work email, Hotmail, Gmail, work phone, home phone, mobile phone, text message, Skype, and MSN IM. Unified messaging is the holy grail in the enterprise space but it also needs to make its way into the consumer space.
"At its most basic level, unified messaging involves storing e-mail and
voice-mail messages in a single mailbox, from which they can be
accessed through any client--mobile phone, laptop, personal digital
assistant--available to the user at a particular time."
I don't want the most basic level. I want the right messages and communications to reach me at the right time. What I want is one user ID where people can reach me, one inbox to check, and one set of calls to return; all of this needs to be accessible from whatever device I am using. I should be able to set the status of that User ID to accept phone calls from Mom but not phone calls from boss, and vice versa. Sometimes I want IM interaction and sometimes I don't. The messages that sit in the inbox should be intelligently categorized by who sent them to me. So what company is going to solve this problem? A company with a massive customer base? A company with market leading products in email and/or voice?
Microsoft thinks about the problem and has the Exchange + IM assets to build on. But ultimately they have yet to build it into their messaging operating system and they are terrible at delivering innovation. RIM is actually doing something about the problem by selling an amazing device that brings together voice and email in a usable format. Google? I am guessing that one of the sharp developers at Google is working on a unified messaging solution with the 20% of their time that they get for their own projects. But is Google a credible place to host all of your communication needs? They just got in the email space, are just starting to dabble in IM, and have no real telephony expertise. Further, they are about search and not communications.
I don't know the answer but I do know that this is something that will be solved twenty years from now. I look forward to the day when you can reach me by telling your device to contact Jamie McDonald. Depending on who you are, you will either get me where I am or deliver a message to my inbox.