Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Amanda Schryver--Skype


Today, I will be responding to the question of the week: "What social & economic forces shape the communication infrastructure," and the case study I will be presenting is over Skype. Skype has become an integral part of the telecommunication industry. It is a highly innovative and well developed technology that is always producing quality products that continue to be an influential aspect of our culture. Because of its free or very inexpensive way to communicate, especially with friends and family overseas, Skype has become a dominant name and has set the standard in Voice over Internet Protocol. In spite of switching from different owners, Skype has continued to keep its customers in mind within all of its technological advances.

My main argument is that with technology advancing at such a fast rate, popular media technologies have had to continue to adapt, while remaining novel, and of course, keeping up with what the consumer wants and expects from their technologies. Skype has done a great job of always thinking of what is best for the customer and has thus, been very successful in the telecommunications industry. Also, with the new merger with Microsoft, Skype is in a great position in the marketplace to collaborate with Microsoft to produce even more amazing products that will continue to be influential in our media driven society.

1 comment:

Amanda Schryver said...

I presented on Skype in class Thursday morning. My main focus was how Skype is a popular and very well received form of telecommunication technology. Skype really focuses on their consumers and how to improve their technologies to make their system easy to use and something that keeps people interested and wanting to participate in.

My response to the question of the week: what social & economic forces shape the communication infrastructure, is that socially speaking, telecommunications today, is all about connecting to people (across all social media outlets) in the easiest, most effective way possible. Economically, this day and age is all about free products that give people what they want and Skype is representative of all of these qualities.

Socially, people can easily connect to friends and family all over the world. Recently, Skype has teamed up with Facebook, so that people have access to their wall and Facebook friends. They can video chat with them, write on their wall, or even update their own status. Skype also provides the ability to call and text people easily for free or very low cost! Economically speaking, the prices they offer are really conducive to the low economy right now. The best products are free but people will also be willing to pay a little money for a service that is really a bang for their buck! Also, cell phone services are now offering video calling on their networks so it does not cut into your cell plan minutes!

It was interesting to hear from the other presenters about other new telephony technologies. I enjoyed learning about how these different technologies work and the ways in which people use them to improve their daily lives. It’s amazing to see how much our world has changed and how much we truly rely on the luxuries that the new technologies provide us with.