Dehyping Skype: On the Future of the Phone (and IM), Steve Whittaker, University of Sheffield August 1, 2006

"Dehyping Skype: On the Future of the Phone (and IM)"
12:00 PM-1:00 PM
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
SI North Third Floor Conference Room

Steve Whittaker of the University of Sheffield will speak. Voice over IP (VOIP) is a technology that has just reached maturity -- in particular with companies like Skype -- having more than 100 million users. In this ethnographic study, Whittaker looked at the use of Skype in organizations and found (counterintuitively) that the commonly touted cost advantage of VOIP is largely irrelevant in this setting. Instead, he found that users combine VOIP with IM to address some of the common problems with phone communication. This has strong design implications for the future of the phone and IM.

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