UPDATE: Skype 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X is now available for download.

UPDATE #2: The 2.8 Beta also includes some experimental support for linking Skype mood messages to Twitter.

Tonight out at the “ShowStoppers” event at MacWorld in San Francisco, Skype announced the new 2.8 Beta for Mac OS X. The new version will apparently be available for download tomorrow, January 6, 2009, from Skype’s website. [NOTE: I will update this post with the download link when it becomes available.]

Continuing Skype’s rather fragmented product strategy, they have rolled out some new features in this 2.8 beta release that will at least stop us Mac users from whining about Windows users always getting the good stuff first. Here’s the quick list of what Skype notes is in this release:

• Skype Access
• Screen Sharing
• Improved chat management: ability to sort chats in the drawer and set priorities to chats
• Quick Add: much easier to add people to chats
• Mood message chat: mood message updates from your friends as chat messages
• Large avatars: 256×256 pixels
• Hidden avatars in incoming contact requests
• Ability to add your own notes to contacts

Courtesy of Skype’s PR team, I’ve had a chance to play with…

In Skype’s continued fragmented and confused product strategy, they came out with Skype 4.0 Beta 3 for Windows. Coverage:

• Main Skype blog post (with pretty screen shots)
• Skype Developer “Garage” blog post
• Windows Release Notes (Interesting to see what has been added/fixed and what still remains)
• Skype Download Site for 4.0 Beta 3

Parts of it look nice… but I won’t experience it myself… I’ve been on a Mac for the last year (like a lot of the bloggers I know) and so we have Skype 2.7. At least I’m not a Linux user, though, as they are stuck much farther behind.

Every time we ask Skype personnel about why their product strategy is so incredibly fragmented across operating systems we get the same stock answers along the lines of “each product group decides what is best and most appropriate for their operating system… blah, blah, blah” along with the reminder to us whining Mac users that we sometimes get functionality that Windows users don’t get. (And in full disclosure, I’m in Skype’s beta program and I am aware of tentative plans for the next Mac version.)

But that’s the point – why are Skype’s versions so incredibly fragmented across…

As long-time readers know, I have written a good bit about Skype on this blog in part because while I started out perhaps 4 years ago as a bit of a skeptic, I’ve become quite a fan of Skype’s over the years… they also were one of the more interesting and definitely disruptive companies in the communications/telecom space. In the past year or two, though, they haven’t quite had the same buzz as they once did, even while they have continued to grow.

This may perhaps be changing… and as per usual the Skype Journal has the best writeup with Jim Courtney’s piece on Skype’s restructuring and hiring of a CTO and Chief Strategy Officer as well as a head of HR. I look forward to seeing what this new team will do to help Skype’s direction. I agree with Jim, too, that one other major appointment would be good:

There’s still one more major executive move I am expecting – a Chief Marketing Officer who bring the badly needed messaging and market communications strategies and disciplines required for a business that’s expected to attract sufficient usage to generate those multi-billion dollar sales.

Skype’s messaging and communication has seemed disjointed over…

I found it somewhat fascinating to see that Skype has posted a job opening for a “Manager, Skype Developer Community”. The job description includes this:

Your challenge is to drive the Skype Community program that moves the new platform forward, compliments our platform product investments and ultimately delights our partner community and users. Your success will be measured by your ability to work closely with the product teams to develop a comprehensive developer marketing plan, and work with our marketing, product, and business development teams to evangelize Skype’s tools, development environment, and unique value proposition to the development community.

You will be part of the newly formed Skype Platform team whose mission is to lead the adoption of Skype’s Platform with developers and ISVs. The team is resourced and chartered to secure the future of the Skype Platform with developer audiences that span corporate and commercial developers, device developers, next generation developers in startups, students and social developers that writes plug-ins, widgets and mash-up applications today.

For those of us watching the emerging communication/telephony space, we’ve seen Skype make several different attempts over the years to create a successful developer program. Given their incredible user base and platform, it’s been curious…

I didn’t notice the number of simultaneous users in my Skype client today, but the folks over at Skype Journal did notice and Skype Numerologist Jean Mercier captured the occasion with a screen shot. Mercier writes:

“We needed only 35 days to go from 13 million concurrent users online to 14 million.”

It is indeed an impressive statistic. (Confirmed by Skype’s own blog.)

Congrats to the folks at Skype!

Technorati Tags: skype, voip