Part 1: Skype: A Coast-to-Coast Application

The “S” might not stand for Superman, but this application might just save your life.

Skype: When we say it is a coast-to-coast application we mean from your coast all the way around the globe and back.  Unless you live under a rock, you already know that Skype is an online application that allows users to call by voice, video, chat and over a traditional land line numbers.  If you are using the service within the application, it is free, which is one of the best features.  On October 13th of 2011, Microsoft completed their purchased of Skype for 8.5 billion dollars and now runs the organization from their headquarters in Luxembourg.

Challenges of the Application:  Just like every other communication tool known to man, it can never replace face-to-face interaction.  This of course is not the applications fault.  When a new tool is released many users believe it will be a cure-all to whatever the tools promises to solve.  In reality, this is a user error.  We love Skype, we use it all of the time, but sometimes lines of communication can be garbled because you miss a lot of the meaning of communication that can only be understood with a face-to-face conversation.  It should be noted that we here at Marah are staunch believers in direct communication, so take the criticism  it for what it is worth.  Most of the time the clarity of the application is great, but sometimes you will run in to snags.  We also don’t always love the sharing aspect.  When you are talking with multiple people and trying to share screens and documents the tools in Skype have fallen short for us which has led us to use other applications for big group meetings.

Why we love it:  You saw I mentioned it was free right?  For most day-to-day internal uses, communication with vendors and one-on-one communication with clients, it is absolutely fantastic and as stated before, 99% of the time we don’t run in to any technical problems.  It is stupidly simple to use, which we love and Skype doesn’t skimp on the user experience.

Skype has saved us on more than one occasion and we know that if you implement it to your digital communication tool rotation it will save you as well.