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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (57904)	12/31/2004 5:26:11 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

<<skype>> <got 10 folks to sign up, and more on the way ... viral> Jay, that gives me a frisson of excitement and anticipation. Skype is running on Metcalfe's Law, writ large, with zero cost of propagation. When fax machines were introduced, the first person had nobody to send a fax to. When there were 10, the degrees of freedom multiplied, but the 11th still had to lay out a fair chunk of money to propagate the network power. The price fell gradually, but still there was a significant marginal cost to buy in. That was Metcalfe's Law in action, but slowly. Skype has a very low marginal cost. For existing cyberspacoids, it's pretty much "click here" and the deal's done. Maybe they need a headset for good sound. Skype has got critical mass and I would say is now unstoppable. A competitor will have to come up with a very good trick to replace that burgeoning network. Each person needs their circle of contacts to join, so they push it. Each of those people has a different circle of contacts, so they push it. 10 at a time will soon mean a billion are using it. And people will need 3G CDMA so they have Skype and SkypeOut on the hoof. Oh, goodness me, that means they'll need to pay a royalty to me and maybe also buy one of my ASICs, and perhaps load up on BREW too. Not to mention gpsOne and other yumminess from Mighty Q! Wheee..... Roll on 2005. Mqurice PS: Get it here folks - it's hot and it's free: skype.com