Skype, which is in the news with their carrier deals, has quietly announced a new version which fixes some bugs and adds some new features like file transfer, file uploading and more.
As I read this, one has to really question the genius management at AOL/Time Warner a few years back. They basically could have owned this space. Instead of being fearful of file transfer and peer to peer, they had it all. It was called ICQ and WASTE. ICQ was the single largest IM base of users and the most tech savvy, early adopter group around. Had Time Warner had the balls to go left, when the rest of the corporate world was still leaning right and let guys like Yossi Vardi (ICQ) and Justin Frankel (i.e. Winamp and Waste and Muse.net to some degree) with the number of users they had at one time under AOL–25 million or so, they would have ruled the online world in ways that Steve Case imagined but could not pull off because of politics and power games.
First the Time Warner broadband network is world class. Roadrunner is fast, robust and works well. T-W also had a telephone division, and some kind of partnership with AT&T. Their content library is still one of the largest.
Can you spell missed opportunities? I sure can. This is so typical of big companies. All they needed was already in place.