Skype, MySpace Partner

October 16, 2007

Just a few days ago I mentioned Skype should be getting more involved in social networking. I also said the company should be streaming audio and video through its client.

Interestingly, 48 hours or so after my post, Skype has announced they have worked a deal with MySpace to integrate its internet telephony software into this social networking phenomenon.

Voice communication is "a competitive advantage to us for gaining users and keeping users," said Kyle Brinkman, vice president of product development at MySpace.

This is positive for Skype but also makes it difficult for the company to become more of a social networking company themselves. The reason of course is the MySpace deal may be in jeopardy if Skype becomes an effective social networking company.

Getting back to the beginning of this article – it seems MySpace and not Skype has made the deal to stream content via their service. Hopefully Skype will do this soon as well.

By the way, if you look at the comments from the Skype post you’ll see Matt Giteau thinks the reason there has been no streaming deal was because Zennstrom didn’t want a competing product to Joost. This makes good sense.

See the Wall Street Journal article for more.