Skype
Om Malik points out that Skype has been averaging $318,000 per day since they were bought by Ebay several months ago. I've been testing Skype for two weeks. On average I've noticed they have 3 to 5 million customers online at any given time. So if you assume Skype has 10 million active customers that means each customer is generating 3.2 cents per day. I on the other hand must be a superuser because I average 50 to 75 cents a day (10 cents a day for my two incoming regular phone numbers and another 40 to 65 cents a day for outgoing calls to regular phone numbers).
I suppose the main point of Skype is to talk to other Skype users for free. I haven't quite got that aspect down yet. I don't know any other Skype usersāÆunless you count my son who enjoys calling my upstairs home office from the iMac in the living room. Somehow folks in the investment field haven't jumped on the Skype bandwagon. On the other hand, I estimate I'm doing 80% of my business calls via Skype, cutting my long distance bill by 75%. My partners in Ohio can now reach me in Idaho by calling a local Ohio number.
Voice clarity has been excellent. I've experienced no dropped calls when dialing out to regular phone numbers and only 2 dropped calls when others have called me. The dial in service is still in beta so I suppose they are still working out the glitches.
Of course, the best part of Skype is the potential to set up a virtual office in some warm, sunny locale with egregious phone rates, like Mexico for example. Ah, the possibilities.