For now, I want to talk about how for many people Skype has ended up being more important than the actual communication or the message itself. In this article I would like to talk about some thoughts I have over this subject, and how more and more people are embracing the wrong trend of revolving the message around tools like Skype, which can be a big and costly mistake for everyone, both in the short and the long run.
I have an old friend on Skype that I sometimes call or send messages to. She always responds back quickly. So today, I decided to call her since Skype was not working. She did not answer, and I left her a message. She texted me back after about an hour, saying her Skype was not working and thus she could not talk to me. We always talk face to face when we meet, so on initial observations it may not be easy for many to realize why one cannot communicate easily on channels other than in person or through Skype, even though through Skype one usually either talks or simply types. I asked my friend if I could talk mention her situation on my site, and she laughed and told me “sure.” In this case, Skype facilitates and even allows the existence of many messages, specially for my friend.
An example of Skype crippling business communication
Earlier today, around 5 am, I get an international call from a distant friend that I also did business with long time ago. I know him for a few years, and thus once a year or so we like to keep in touch. He told me that his company support systems were down, as they depended solely on Skype and they needed any advice on how to communicate with about 50 of their big and only clients. Those clients were used to opening up Skype from anywhere and being able to reach the customer support for this company at anytime and to be connected live to an actual support person with a webcam, guaranteed. My friend knows a little bit about my background and enough about my skills, so he thought I could somehow come up with a solution that could fix their Skype-based customer support system for them.
Now that Skype was logging out not only my friend’s company but also customers repeatedly, my friend’s company could not simply say to customers “Hey, Skype is down, not our fault“, since the customers could say “Well, why did you choose Skype as your support system over which you have no control over in situations like these? We need support now. Not later, but right now, at this very instant.” The customers would be completely right in this case. So I asked my distant friend about how their support systems depended on Skype, and I told him that if I feel that the explanation will not help me come up with a problem, I will cut him off. He was really desperate for an immediate, so there was no time to lose with formalities or listening to everything.
He started explaining how their customer support systems worked, and after less than 3 minutes of him explaining things, I was really happy to know more about how Skype can actually help complex systems, but at the same time I realized knowing how Skype worked will not help me find the solution. I had to focus on alternatives immediately, that could do an even better job than Skype for the time being. I cut him off, rather abruptly, and told him I had a few solutions for him, and apologized for cutting him off. The way he told me with enthusiasm and delight that he did not mind being cut off showed me that things were really bad for him because of Skype not working. I told him of a few solutions and alternatives, and told him why one of the alternatives I think would work for him immediately, and how. After the entire thing was finished, I asked him if I could write about it on my personal site, since this is a topic that can affect all of us forever [more of it below]. He told me to wait a bit until later, and that he would call me again, at which time I could go ahead with writing about it while I also avoided mentioning any specifics, names or my exact solution [since he plans to use it from now on as the primary backup], so here is what I have on the entire topic.
Skype is a tool to help your message. Skype is not the message.
Skype is there to help you communicate in more ways. Let us read that one more time please. Skype is there to help you communicate in more ways. Skype is not the message; it is the medium. Let me repeat that again in a little bit more enhanced manner please. Skype is not the message; it is a technological tool. In order to communicate, you should at least have the message you want to convey, and you should what you want to convey through the message. If you know the message and know that you want to communicate something through the message, you can easily switch from one medium to another and from one tool to another in order to come up with alternatives to things like Skype.
Skype was known, until today, for almost never having any connection problems. The Skype platform itself is considered very robust and reliable by many, and thus even though it is a severe problem for many that is still happening at the time of this writing, this recent downtime in Skype communications will probably result in many companies and many people seeking out only alternative backups for the future, instead of seeking out complete replacements to be installed right away. Because of such issues, you should always use technology to only help you in communication, instead of define communication. Technology should rely on your message. Your message should not rely on technology. Technology should revolve around your message. Your message should not revolve around technology.
Control the message. Control the tool. Do not let the tool control you or the message.
If you know how to communicate with people, you will not depend on Skype to communicate with them. You will realize how to communicate and talk normally on mediums other than Skype when needed, so that you do not waste other people’s time and so that you do not bring conversations to a standstill, causing others to be uncomfortable and inconvenienced simply because you depend on Skype to feel comfortable when it comes to communication and simply because Skype is not working. For example, if you can communicate perfectly via Skype but do not know how to communicate via e-mail or phone or any other medium even when you are forced to, that means you have focused more on the medium and the tool, like Skype, instead of the message and the concept of communicating that message itself.
If you are used to asking people how their day was via Skype, you should know how to ask the same question via e-mail or over the phone. If you are used to sending information to people via Skype, you should know how to send the information via e-mail or via actual postal mail to people. If you are used to finding out more about people through Skype, you should know how to do the same via other mediums and tools like e-mail or other instant messengers. If you are used to providing help to others via Skype, you should know what the actual help consists of, and offer that help via other mediums and channels, including doing it in person.
Revolve the medium and technology around your message.
Revolve the medium around your message. Revolve technology around your message. Majority of the bloggers and majority of the people in the offline world revolve their message around other things so much, that if anything other than the message changes, the actual message gets affected and changes too. It is like 99% of all PowerPoint presentations at majority of the conferences, where the message revolves around PowerPoint. It is simply nonsense, and it is simply hilarious.
More and more people know how to communicate only through certain tools; they do not know how to communicate a message.
Is it a bad thing for more and more people to know how to communicate only through certain tools and to not know how to communicate a message? For me it is very bad, as it is more important for me to focus on the message and communicating that message, instead of focusing only or more on the communication tool provided. Otherwise, the message revolves around the tool, and thus the message gets limited and changes. As I said above, control the tools, instead of letting the tools control you or the message.
A great example of this? You do not send items that need shipping depending on how they will be shipped. You send whatever item you have that needs shipping. No matter what the item is, you ship it in a rugged piece of cover, whether it is an envelope or a box, so that shipping companies like UPS, DHL, Fed-Ex or USPS can deliver them via a truck, a train, a plane, in person or even on a boat. That is how much importance you should give to the message when it comes to realizing how much focus, compared to the message, you should put on the medium and the tool. The medium and the tool need a lot of focus, but that focus should be less than the original focus that you put on your message and the way you want the message presented or communicated.
What happened to my personal friend and my business friend?
As for my personal friend, Stephanie, if you are reading this, feel free to call me anytime, as doing a voice chat over Skype once a month can be the same as having a conversation over the phone. 
As for my distant friend with the business issue, he called me again about an hours ago and told me that he is happy with the solution I offered and that it is helping keep all the customers around, even though Skype is still having issues. He said my alternate solution has literally saved him thousands of dollars per each customer, without considering the costs that the company might have experienced had any customer left the company in the last 12 hours or so. I told him “You better be happy, since it works and I didn’t charge you for it. 
” Well, he is so happy, he offered to pay for my entire trip and accommodation if I ever decide to visit him and his company to see if I would want to work there in the future. 
Those are some points of one of my small thoughts of the second. Thank you for reading about what happened in an hour or less of my life today. I really appreciate it.
« Show less..
Yesterday, I started talking to someone I wanted to interview for something via e-mail, and later was looking forward to talking to her on Skype as she has Skype. I rarely open Skype daily, so I decided to log onto Skype and leave it on, as I find it really pleasant to run into someone nice and logical online. I left Skype on and realized that it was disconnecting every 2 minutes or so. At first, I thought the disconnection was something related to my internet connection, but soon I realized that the Skype service itself was having issues; I will talk about how Skype is handling such a problem in a future article. Lucky for me and that new person, we have e-mail, so things are so far not at a complete standstill because of Skype not working. Unfortunately, sometimes tools like Skype take control of messages and the concept of communication for many people.
Slowly, over the course of about 15 hours, however, I found out how many other people simply cannot communicate easily outside of Skype. Majority of the people, and an increasing number of people in an alarming trend that is becoming more popular, are forgetting that a message and communication should be like a box, with the contents of the message and the actual box do not change no matter how the box is moved around or presented anywhere, similar to the box shown at the right. The rectangular box shown in the image on the right is brown, sealed with a nice tape, and ready to be shipped or opened. The box does not care whether you carry it in your hand or if you put it in a truck with other similar boxes on top of it. That is how a message should be. There is a reason why I chose a sealed box in the picture on the right, which I will explain in another article in the near future hopefully. 
As I sometimes say, the question of whether or not one should use instant messaging over e-mail or vice versa can be answered by finding out which medium the message in question can benefit from, and what the participants of that medium can be most comfortable with also. Following are 5 random benefits and drawbacks of using e-mail over instant messages, to help you get a sense of why you may prefer one over the other, or even why you may treat both the same.
This should be an interesting question that may affect many of your online activities and interaction with others. Do you like using 
Also, you can keep in touch with friends through different things including 
