Robert Sanzalone

In 2007 when we left Canada to live in Japan, one of the LEAST things I  worried about was staying connected. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr… all were in place to keep a nice little “scattered” journal of my adventures around the world. Surprisingly enough, the application I turned to the most for the GREATEST connectivity were none of these… it was Skype. No, NOT the free audio or video  calls. It was the GROUP CHAT.

I created what was known then as a Public Chat Group. This allowed me to bring people in, encourage discussion (usually about technology) and moderate anyone who became overly obnoxious or belligerent to the others (yes, very much like a kindergarten teacher). I learned a lot about building communities online during that time and my reward was the friendship with many fantastic people around the world (not to mention a few new clients and opportunities along the way as well!).

The following year I continued my expansion with Skype, particularly with the Japanese Expat community in Tokyo and Nagoya. I started the TechTalkJapan Public Chat Group which later changed to JapanTechTalk and subsequently spawned into a weekly live podcast.

In 2009, I backed off of Skype…  for whatever reason. Twitter was now the tool of the geekorati and there seemed to be so many other ways to collaborate online, especially with the new iPhone and the plethora of cool apps being introduced. Skype just seemed to be, well, old skool.

Now a new calendar is hanging on the wall and I venture back to the Skype waters… to be shocked and shaken. Public Groups no longer exist on Skype! What??!!!

How this “little change” went unnoticed was in the version of Skype I was using (on Windows, yes – stop the booing and hissing). Even though I had purchased a new computer midway through last year, the version of Skype which came bundled with my Japanese EeePC was 3.5 and I never bothered to look. The major changes came with version 4.0 which was released a year ago! Talk about being left out of the loop. Since Skype hasn’t disabled any features from earlier versions, there really is no way of knowing this unless you are one of those people who always look for the latest beta versions coming out. I guess I’m just getting too spoiled with the iPhone which tells me automatically when a new version is ready to download.

What does this mean for online community collaboration with Skype? Well it doesn’t really kill it since the groups are still there and accessible. Most of the moderator tools have now been hidden in /get commands (ya, not big fan of that move).  A direct link to invite people can still be generated with the command /get uri but the NEW URL produced starts with skype?chat.. and not http:// , so shortening it with services such as bit.ly is impossible. Another scratch your head in amazement  move.

As long time pacificIT Chat participant Dan York noted, Skype is still the preferred chat client of choice for most people. In fact, I would say with the upcoming iPad most people will now be looking at Skype as the de facto way of using the device for video chatting – so the future is looking blindingly bright for the company.

Regardless of these surprises, my strategy for 2010 is to return to Skype and to fully utilize it to connect with friends, family and clients around the world. I just hope if more major changes like these come down the pipe this year, someone will send me the memo.

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