Now I can see you, really
And some day we’ll all look back and say “July 6th, 2011: the day the Internet changed forever”. That’s the date where FB and Skype got together and moved the finish line. No, not really…
I go on FB to keep in touch with family. I go on Skype (less often) for the same reason. I’m too cheap to Bell them. For the last few years I’ve paid a monthly dot to the folks for the right to interrupt others. Didn’t do it often, but it was there; audio and video and the foundations of a party line.
Today, I called friends and family from within FB, and they looked (with one exception who kept morphing into dog and cat and alien) much like their profile pics. Reassuring. A functional video chat system for the rest of the world.
I’ll be curious to see how this all plays out at the corporate level. Recently, Microsoft spent a huge pile of loose pocket change to get control of Skype. Now, a marriage with FB? What about the peer-to-peer roots of the whole thing? Will the load on those server farms suddenly mean that updates are lost in the dust under the bed? Will the predatory nature of certain people be revealed in living colour? What about the (rare) individual that hasn’t bought a webcam? Yet.
Will I be able to call from Skype to FB? Will firewalls fall? Stay tuned, ‘cuz the times, they are a changin’ (thanks, Bob).
And with that, I’m going back to see if anybody else will accept my invitation to parlee.
