In 2003 a revolutionary startup launched a service that allowed you not only chat, but to make voice and video calls to your contacts anywhere in the world, for free. They went mobile for both iOS and Android in 2009, shortly after the smartphone boom.

I’m not talking about Whatsapp here. This is Skype, a startup that came years before Whatsapp, Telegram, iMessage, Facetime, Viber and Line and had the exact same functionality that all these apps have today.

One might say that Skype’s focus wasn’t messaging but calls, which makes a lot of sense as they have indeed become a key player in the international call market share (34% as of 2012). However, the recent $19B Whatsapp acquisition versus a $8.5B by Microsoft sounds about halfway as cool, especially for a function that Skype performed before anyone else.

Using Skype as a messaging service would allow us to continue mobile conversations on our computers, avoiding those tiny touch keyboards and the danger of an embarrasing auto-correct. Those who have used iMessage on their Mac probably understand better than anyone the advantages of texting without the distraction of having to pick up your phone. And still, people don’t seem to use Skype for anything else than calling.

So what happened? Why aren’t we using it to communicate with our peers rather than going through the trouble of installing yet another application?

Logging in is so 2000's

If you hadn’t noticed, not having to log in rids us of one (very annoying) step in any application. It’s clear that technology is migrating to security verifications that no longer require you to enter a passcode, the best example of which is Apple’s new Touch ID.

In regards to apps, this has also been a bet with Facetime or Facetime Audio; you enable them once and then they just work, assuming that you are protected by the fact that they are on your personal phone and that it’s password protected. This is exactly what Whatsapp took advantage of: it got rid of the security clearance so that opening the app was as simple as opening your regular SMS service.

Whatsapp works by creating a Jabber ID with your phone number and a secret password that is associated with your device. You never have to ‘log in’ to access your messages: you are always online so that you can receive messages anytime. Just having to wait 1 or 2 seconds on a login screen becomes a barrier for an app that you will potentially open dozens if not hundreds of times a day.

Chicken and Egg

These sort of services are often victims of the chicken and egg issue. In order to start using it you need to have enough contacts already using it, so what comes first?

Whatsapp was able to overcome this with close to no advertising budget, they simply provided the perfect solution to the extremely common problem of costly SMS. Most people was already paying a data plan, and a $0,99 app cost was a small price to pay for forever-free SMS. Certainly a better deal than paying your phone company’s stupid rates.

I don’t think the Whatsapp interface is particularly good looking, you can’t even set a custom text tone. But I am still forced to use Whatsapp because all my contacts do.

But once again, most of us were Skype users before becoming Whatsapp users. Why didn’t Skype take advantage of this to lead the messaging market?

Focus on doing one thing right

This is a key principle for anyone building any startup: ensure you do one thing perfectly right instead of trying to do everything. It’s pretty clear that the Skype team has always focused in providing the best calling experience and I still believe they do.

Calling-related features like the Skype Number or Skype To Go continue to be unique, which confirms that Skype will continue to lead this market for some time to come. I’m not saying their move was wrong, I’m rather saying that they had the chance to diversify and they didn’t, either because they didn’t want to or because they failed in their attempts to do so.

I’m more inclined to believe the latter is right. For example, Skype recently released new features that let you receive messages while being offline, and has optimised their login experience on mobile phones. This is the right thing to do, it just happened about 4 years late.

Mobile

The internet is in constant transformation and for the past few years we’ve all witnessed the rise of mobile-specific websites and startups. I believe Skype is one of the greatest examples of companies that failed to ride the mobile wave and are just trying to catch up now, a few years too late.

As soon as smartphones and 3G were widely available, Skype should have become the standard application for texting and calling. Mobile users crave free SMS and free calls and this is why 6% of humanity now communicates regularly through Whatsapp. Skype should have been preinstalled on every smartphone or it should have been the first app you install, along with Facebook or Twitter.

Skype continues to be a good and necessary desktop application, but mobile still requires a lot of work and they are falling further behind every single day. I’m sorry Skype, but you were late.