Does Skype Own The VoIP Brand?

When people think of VoIP, they think of Skype. That's the interesting conclusion of Phil Wolff's blog on Skype Journal. That's bad news for Vonage...and very good news for Skype. Wolff reaches his conclusion by doing an analysis of blogpulse's chart of Skype's blogshare. It shows, in his words, "how closely the line of the term 'VoIP' follows the incidence of Skype-related terms. It's almost as if VoIP is mostly getting mentioned as an explanation or echo of Skype."

For Vonage, that's obvious bad news. But then again, Vonage is used to bad news; it's the sea that it swims in. What's one more bucket added to a deluge?

For Skype, it's all good. Wolff accurately points out that Skype offers far more than VoIP, with features such as presence, collaboration, picture sharing, video, and so on. So it can use VoIP as a starting point, show what else it offers, while Vonage and all the others don't offer competing features.

Of course, that still doesn't mean that Skype will make back the investment eBay put into it. I don't think it will. Most consumers, after all, don't know what VoIP is, and so it won't help Skype with the mass market, which is where it needs to be if it's going to make back the billions eBay poured into it.