On Thursday, Microsoft's Skype launched Skype In The Workspace, a service that combines elements of Quora and social networking to create an online space where entrepreneurs can seek knowledge from one another.
In reality, Skype In The Workspace is a fancy bulletin board designed to help small businesses connect with each other to provide live question-and-answer sessions - via Skype, naturally. In a sense, the bare-bones service is simply fertile ground to grow new contacts from an entrepreneur's existing list of Skype contacts, providing an automated way to search out new contacts and connect.
Skype In The Workspace Coming Out Of Beta
Skype In The Workspace exits the beta stage on Thursday, allowing the world to sign up and seek out new connections. The launch ends a six-month beta trial that enabled 500 businesses, offering more than 140 different services, to sign up, try out and test the platform, Microsoft said.
Microsoft sees big potential for the service: The Small Business Administration claims that 27 million small businesses existed in 2011, while Skype boasts 280 million active user. It makes sense that at least some of them will want to connect with each other.
According to Ural Cebeci, a product marketing manager at Skype, the Skype In The Workspace platform allows entrepreneurs and small businesses to overcome limitations of geography, connecting online with people whoe they may not have otherwise met. The tools are still relatively barebones; there are no explicit ties to other Microsoft services, such as Outlook.com. Users will have to schedule their own conferences using their own software. Skype In The Workspace users won't be able to pay each other for the privilege of meeting either, at least not through the service itself.
Cebeci compared Skype In The Workspace to a coffee house or a shared workspace. 'It's really the community talking to the community,' he said in an interview.
Microsoft already provides collaboration tools for businesses, namely Lync, which also includes the ability to collaborate and talk to one another via live video. The difference, Cebeci said, is that Skype In The Workspace is all about small businesses, while Lync's focus is on the enterprise. In the future, Lync users will directly be able to contact Skype users via IM, and be able to see their presence, and do audio calls, and vice versa.
Microsoft also has SharePoint, but that's somewhat further removed, using collaborative workspaces and shared pages to manage and develop projects. Still, given that Microsoft executives have talked about Skype's integration across all of its product lines, Skype should be able to span most if not all of Microsoft's product offerings. (Separately, Microsoft said that it plans to retire Windows Messenger by early 2013, but that all of a user's contacts will be imported into Skype 6.0.)
Skype In The Workspace's 'opportunities' are themselves curated, and users can also search out their own. The layout, however, is open and unfocused, and in this iteration, it's really contingent upon users to seek out their own opportunities to network, or else hope that Skype In The Workspace puts a relevant connection in front of them.
Hands-On With Skype In The Workspace
Users visiting Skype In The Workspace for the first time are asked to log on with either their Skype ID or LinkedIn profile, then fill in a little information about themselves. At this point, tying your profile to LinkedIn saves some time.
From there, you, well, search. Skype In The Workspace presents a list of curated opportunities, but the service resembles Craigslist in that each participant can both hang out a shingle (if they so choose) as well as hunt down their own sources of knowledge. There's no real 'social' element to Skype In The Workspace - users are invited to chat for 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes and so on on a given topic. Points aren't awarded for knowledge, for example, as some of Microsoft's own TechNet blogs do, and users can't vote topics up or down.
Really, there's no indication whether someone claiming to be a 'social media expert' really is, or if they're a raw greenhorn. Or, worse still, a bored Chatroulette user seeking out new horizons. To learn more about a potential connection, a Skype In The Workspace user might be better off exploring the connected LinkedIn profile and other social networks.
If you do find a potential conversation that interests you, however, clicking on the 'connect' button generates an email to facilitate the connection. But if Skype In The Workspace knows whether or not the other user is online (the concept of "presence"), there's no indication.
As with any social network, the problem is one of scale. For now, the relatively limited number of users means that users can be assured that they'll discover most of the opportunities Skype In The Workspace offers. But as more sign on, the risk is that the service will be drowned by a wave of opportunities and users. Features such as filtering by tags, for example, will be left to new iterations, Cebeci said.
Likewise, users can't import their existing list of Skype contacts into the Skype In The Workspace framework, which apparently means yet another platform for notifications and connections.
A video-based, Quora-like repository of knowledge seems to have value, but only if users can quickly connect and benefit. Skype In The Workspace really needs filtering capabilities, as well as some sort of reputation system. Skype's built an intriguing platform with Skype In The Workspace, but this initial version seems more curiosity than useful tool for entrepreneurs.
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