Skype: The Missing Feature

Skype is great for calls and video, I use it every day to keep in touch with friends, family and co-workers. But why has Skype not implemented an email service yet? With all the buzz around Gmail, .Mac and upgrades to both Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, why have Skype missed the Email 2.0 revolution?

Of course there is money involved. There would be considerable startup costs, buying all those servers for storage wouldn’t be cheap. There would be competition, Skype would have to equal or better the storage capacity offered by Gmail. But there would be some serious benefits for Skype.

To quote Steve Jobs, email is the ‘killer app’ of the internet. We use email more than ever, and as more and more people come online that trend is set to keep growing. So why do Skype not integrate Skype into a web-based email platform. Give it a slick design, slap on some flashy AJAX and give people a lot of space. Then, with Skype having control of the server, why not automatically hyperlink any telephone number (contained in the millions of emails being sent) to open with Skype? Skype and Google have already entered into a Click-to-Call advertising agreement, so why not use the same technology to bolster their bottom line? In fact, Skype could display targeted text ads to their email customers and generate revenue in the same manner Google does with Gmail.

Skype already has a major foothold in IP telephony, why not cement that position and make Skype the complete communications platform for voice, video and email? To me it just seems so logical.