Skype Hires New COO - from Motorola

Skype announced today that they have created a new position, Chief Operating Officer, and hired someone from Motorola for that position. Considering the performance of Motorola in the cell phone market recently, it seems to me like it should be a good fit. They also chose to continue to propagate the "309 million registered users" lie in the press announcement...

Other Skype news, their "Director of Product Management" wrote a blog entry addressed to the users of the Skype 4.0 beta. He repeats all of the same old empty promises about "we're listening", but of course there are absolutely no concrete results from that. It's the same old Skype mode of operation, tell the users you love them, tell them that you are listening, and do nothing at all, so eventually the fuss dies down because people get tired of complaining. It worked for the overhaul of the Skype User Forums, so I can only assume that the objective with the new release of Skype is the same - to reduce the number of users. If they don't make major changes to the 4.0 beta, it will be every bit as successful in that objective as the Skype Community was.

He also says in the blog that "we've had some very positive feedback from a lot of people"... but of course there are no examples of that. I'd be interested in seeing it, because the only comments I have seen, in blogs and on the Skype Community, has been blanket condemnation and rejection, even from very experienced Skype users. If 95% of the feedback is negative, maybe you should start to consider that you're going in the wrong direction, rather than having a party and trumpeting the 5% who make positive comments.

jw 1/7/2008