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Telecom & Wireless

As Skype Fiddles, Competitors Crank Up

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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From Internet Outsider

As Skype continues its dreamy foray into social networking, local search, expert services, and web surfing (Stumble Upon), other online communications companies are cranking up to focus on…online communications.  According to BusinessWeek, for example, Skype-partner Intel has just helped pump $20 million into Skype-competitor Jajah–which, unlike Skype, offers the convenience of making calls using regular telephones.

Skype’s lead in PC-based VOIP is safe for now–no less a competitor than Yahoo launched a competing service a while back and has been met with a collective yawn–but the company’s seeming desire to focus on anything but telephony is making it vulnerable. Taking down the traditional telco industry will yield a massive pot of gold for whoever ends up doing it. There are still plenty of problems to solve before this happens, however, and none of them involve local search. (Hat tip to Jason Jones).

Posted by Henry Blodget

http://www.internetoutsider.com

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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