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- Lost in the Skype Prime flurry
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Skype’s Prime Partner Balancing Act
Lost in all the blog posts on Skype Prime amid the speculation about how it could be used for a wide range of knowledge exchange and services is the prospect for conflict between Skype and its Extras Gallery partners, BitWine and Jyve. But first to put the motivation for using these services in perspective, I want to repeat the excellent Comment that Alon Cohen of BitWine put on Luca Filigheddu’s post:
A large portion of the world economy is based on paid services. In our days many of those services may be delivered over the Internet.
Premium services are similar to a Blog, the better marketing you have, the better content you provide the more readers you will have and higher monetization.
Information is free, knowledge is not. Customization of the flood of information to a nice answer for an urgent unique problem worth money to people who don’t have the time or the skill on a particular subject matter. They are the people paying for the services.
If you have the time and skills get the knowledge you need for free. No premium call system will change that.
Skype Prime is in a beta phase, initially putting out an incomplete offering while seeking feedback and information about:
what Skypers may want to offer as services, the psychology behind the dialog between customer and service provider to establish credibility and value prior to delivering the knowledge, how to build a network of trusted service providers payment terms and refund logistics to ensure a “fair trade” for value
Some key questions:
How will Skype Prime differentiate itself from services already offered through “Extras Gallery” Partners Bitwine and Jyve? What is the balance between Skype’s marketing of Extras Gallery products and services and the need for each service to do its own marketing to gain customers? If Skype feels this is a key revenue generator, why did they take the “development” as opposed to the “acquisition” route to gain experience with these types of services and transactions. How are the Extras Gallery partners reacting to this announcement? How will Skype use this as an example of working with their partners to encourage both new and ongoing independent investment in Extras Gallery Partners businesses? What logistics exist to ensure a “fair trade”? This includes how does the service establish credibility between provider and customer, what mechanism is in place to provide refunds if a customer is unsatisfied? How will Skype monitor and police service providers?
While all this speculation has been going on, I have been registering for all three services and had discussions with principals at all three. First let’s look briefly at the services:
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