Fring’s mis-use of Skype software was damaging to our brand and reputation
An hour or so ago, Fring reported on their blog that we had blocked their access to Skype. I want to make one thing absolutely clear: this is untrue.
Fring was using Skype software in a way it wasn’t designed to be used – and in a way which is in breach of Skype’s API Terms of Use and End User License Agreement. We’ve been talking with Fring for some time to try to resolve this amicably.
However, over time, Fring’s mis-use of our software was increasingly damaging our brand and reputation with our customers. On Friday, for example, Fring withdrew support for video calls over Skype on iOS 4 without warning, again damaging our brand and disappointing our customers, who have high expectations of the Skype experience.
We actively encourage developers to build products that work with Skype, acting, of course in accordance with our various API licences. At the same time, Skype will rigorously protect our brand and reputation, and those developers that do not comply with our terms will be subject to legal enforcement.
In this case, however, there is no truth to Fring’s claims that Skype has blocked it. Fring made the decision to remove Skype functionality on its own.
I use Skype call out services on my N95 with Fring, now I cannot use this service,. Pls stop your quarrel with Fring, we want the services, no the nonsense!!!
Can see why it was damaging to your brand and reputation – Fring were actual able to bring out a great quality, functional app in a short amount of time.
How can I use Skype IM from my Android phone now? (I am in the UK)
To echo many of the comments above and add my own:
1) As an Android user (specifically Nexus One) there is NO Skype app that is viable for me now that Fring is dead.
2) I use Skype for business purposes almost exclusively.
3) I PAY for Skype services therefore I am a CUSTOMER.
4) By failing to provide a viable Android app except to Verizon (one carrier among many) Skype is NOT SERVING IT’S CUSTOMERS.
5) I may look for another IP telephony provider and take MY MONEY to another company.
The failure of Skype to provide a viable app for my mobile platform is simply an indication that the company (Skype) does not have it’s finger on the pulse of the market. Fring demonstrated clearly that the demand exists. Get off your collective butt Skype!!!
Count on me as well.
I have used Skype credits to make calls from mobile. But as far as Skype has no support to Nexus One and banned Fring, I have no other way as stop paying Skype and go to other SIP providers for mobile VoIP solutions.
Bye-bye “clever” company S…e
hmmm.
tried the mentioned Nimbuzz. .. for some reason Skype keeps getting disconnected every now and then – like every two hours or so, wonder why and how long we can use it on nimbuzz
I think skype just don’t care about anyone but the big V. Hey At&t has it’s Apple and gizmo apps, Sprint has that Fring app, But it is odd that Verizon mostly gets the only attention. You want Skype here get Verizon. Thats bull I pay for skype along with several others, you guys have managed to damage your own name not Fring. All they did was figure a way to link all cell phone users to one network, but I cant blame you guys for wanting to keep you hands in Verizon’s back pocket after all money talks. (GREED) is my closing word!
this is very disappointing as Skype is no longer providing an acceptable level of service. they simply have 2 choices. restore the ability of fring users to connect or bring an android version out that is not limited to a single network. Skype you are failing your users. correct this ASAP or you will lose users hand over fist. you have been warned. change this unacceptable policy and stop trying to blame fring. YOU pulled the plug now YOU restore it
It looks like you’re scared of what fring has. If fring was doing something so horrible you should have blocked it right away but supposedly haven’t. Why not? On android, fring is useful unlike yours that offers no video calls or integration with other im’s. If you prefer to lose users then continue blocking. Game over when they make a desktop version.
That´s a GOOD ask:
Why don’t you just build video conferencing into Skype mobile???
I use a Nokia (symbian) N78 and I’m very disappointed with this. If you don’t want us to use Fring with skype, give us your alternative with video!!! That´s simple!!!
no skype for android?! … maybe all the Android users should switch to GoogleVoice? If skype doesn’t work, we need an alternative, or?
After all the posts above, what’s your next step, skype?
I’m waiting…
… to take my final decision and tell all my friends that use skype too.
No response….. I am not surprised. Thanks for $HITTING on us Skype. Or should I say Verizon, or ATT? Which one has their hooks in you? Probably both. Sell Out Much? You’re the next AOL.
Skype? What? Huh? Haven’t heard of it.
This is very upsetting. Skype is a huge international organization; you have tons of resources and probably have a few very smart software engineers working for your organization. Are you really going to tell me you can not develop a native Android application?
You had recently threatened Fring with a lawsuit if they did not stop using skype protocol. I find this extremely upsetting. Why would you do this makes no sense to me. I bought the HTC Evo 4g from Sprint instead of the new iPhone because I wanted to be able to use the Skype video chat on my extremely powerful phone. I paid $300 for this phone and now it is useless. It is just another Android phone because I can not use Fring to communicate with my skype contacts. Now I don’t know your business model and profit making but I do know that regardless of whether I was using Fring or Skype I still had to get skype credits from your organization and you still made money from my use of your network.
If you are going to disallow Fring from using skype protocol, then why don’t you have a Skype application for Android which is available on any Android rather than just Verizon??? I don’t understand, Skype is supposed to be all about openness and free communication since when did that become all about profit management?
I will tell you something. I have never heard of Fring but I started looking into skype for Android and was unpleasantly surprised to find out that your organization does not have an app. Its amazing to me, so I found out about Fring. Had you actually developed an App for Skype I would be using Skype. So any profit that you claim was lost due to people using Fring and app is because you DID NOT provide an app. You are responsible and now you are punishing people like me your loyal customers.
Now I am a software engineer, I develop automatic fingerprint systems. I also develop applications for Android, and I know it is not very difficult to make an application Skype especially since you probably have extremely smart engineers working for you.
The bottom line is if you are not going to create an app then allow Fring to use your protocol. However, either way I already lost all respect for your organization and trust me I had a lot of respect for you guys. Now you are just another corporation out to screw its customers.
You know it’s companies like your which slow down progress and development of open communications. Thanks a lot Skype for bring down progress because you are too lazy to put in some man hours to make an app and you are too greedy to allow someone else to serve your customers… while you get all the profit by the way Fring makes no profit from using skype protocol
Guys, I’m sorry but I don’t live in the planet called US. Should I move to there to have a good usage of skype? Or just buy only a skype phone to use?
What means “Skype for iPhone: Update for iOS 4 coming soon”? I don’t speak this language right… Apple released yesterday the new firmware or the developer kit?
The team that develops are really big, like 1 guy to handle many languages and devices…
Skype don’t want to damage the brand, why is taking so long to release the update? I know, because they are spendind time fighting with other companys that has things the official app don’t…
Skype and Fring, looks like two kids fighting for a candy. Fring is so huge that is making a lot of money with the users that has account at skype and pay the calls to normal phones.
To be really honest, stop to be stupid. Listen the users!!! You guys exist because the users like and some pay to have extra-services like me.
The slogan, Skype everywhere is a lie?
This is really sad…
Can someone translate this for me? “Skype is even better when he is always with you”.
I really can not understand the meaning… Sorry…
Mr. Miller, “Vox populi – vox Dei”! Now it’s time to show to all the users that their opinion is important for Skype, isn’t it? What do You say?
what about skype for windows mobile?
skype has a terrible mobile service and fring was a nice alternative.
I’m waiting for goggle or microsoft VOIP to leave Skype.
banning fring is the stupidest move of skype to date. there is another android app called nimbuzz which enables skype calling. i dare you to ban it as well. shame on you, skype.
After being a loyal, patient customer with Skype for over a year I just canceled my subscription. I refuse to pay a company that refuses to adapt to the times. I am now pushing for my company to abandon Skype as well, and being the IT guy who manages communication I think i stand a good chance at success. Skype is supposed to be using profits to keep up with the times, but their (lack of) updates, questionable business practices, and greed have made me see that they are no longer a company I want to do business with. This Fring episode is the final straw. If Fring is providing a service you won’t/can’t offer, you should be communicating with your users rather than keeping quiet. Tell us that you are or aren’t gong to do something CONSTRUCTIVE about it instead of killing a feature that could have GAINED you a larger user base! Leaving Fring operational until you had your own app would have been the best thing for you, Fring, and your most important investors… YOUR USERS! If you’re a employee at Skype you should feel ashamed of what your company did. I used to enjoy using Skype and felt happy to be a paying customer. Now… I’m just looking at your so called competitors, people who want to innovate and provide features, not when you felt like it, but when they are needed and demanded. I will be canceling my now free Skype account soon unless there is an appropriate, educated, CLEAR,and hopefully remorseful response that shows Skype cares about the people that made the company as good as it was… the users. I bet nothing happens. Skype has forgotten that without happy users, their software is as useful as a microphone thats not plugged in.
I have to say as an Australian user of Skype and Fringe when I’m mobile I want both to work together. I want people to be able to contact me via Skype when I’m away from my PC. Skype you should be acting like the large company you are and realize that business is about leveraging, leveraging other technologies to make yours better. If you cant see the world as a global place, ie: who cares about Verizon or just the US, someone else needs to take you out and replace your technology. Keep it going Skype and a start-up will certainly do that, and players like Fring will have a following that will take customers like me with it.
Get your act together Skype, build products that are for today’s technology and get them to market like you should be able to for a large company with a lot more resources than Fring
Pissed off Aussie who now cant communicate with friends overseas without being in front of my PC. Sad day Skype, actually its pathetic
We need Skype for Android phones for other carriers besides Verizon, I was using Fring and did not notice that I no longer had Skype on it. Can you guys please come out with a version for Android users that use other carriers? If we had an option to download the app directly from Skype, users would not resort to Fring to use Skype.
It took a very long time for users in the US to get Skype on their phones please do not prolong the process any longer and create an app for the Android Market Place. I actually got this phone because I would have been able to use Skype on it but now with the whole Fring deal I am out of luck and I am sure there are other users that feel the same way.
Can we please get an estimated delivery date for Skype for the Android Market Place?
Thanks
-Beenish
Congradulations! This situation has created only losers: Fring, whose deserved promising start was torked off by Skype’s efforts, the Android user, who is now deprived of the possibility of feasibly using Skype on his mobile phone, and Skype, who have quite rightfullly suffered enormous damage to their image and, as a result, hopefully will choke on their own self-indulging attitude.
Skype, you used to be an innovative and open-minded start-up which provided excellent service and good quality products, and now look at yourself. You have turned into a slow, corrupt and monolithic enterprise which does what a slow, corrupt and monolitic enterprise does – worry about nothing else but quick money.
After being put off by every update to your PC/Mac client which has consistently made the experience worse (flashing ads and other nonsense), the promise you never kept (bringing a client to Android), your now piss-poor business practises and pathetic excuses, I have decided to find a viable alternative and take my money there.
As once a follower, I never thought I would say this: You need to go out of business.
eradius commented Thursday, Jul 15
Dear Skype. There was a time when we really loved you. Today we hope another Voip sw client will arrive on every mobile phone. If this happens, and it will, you are screwed. Good bye.
eradius, you are correct. Fring is more likely to become a real competitor to Skype now they are no longer a partner to Skype. However, Fring would have to launch their own desktop apps as well. The biggest threat to Skype is Apple with FaceTime. If Skype fails to keep iPhone customers POSITIVELY motivated to stick with them they are in trouble. FaceTime is coming to the iPod next. We know that. We know that it will allow calling through email address as an identifier so you don’t need a phone number. Here is where I start guessing…iChat will be replaced by FaceTime on the Mac as well. Once we have this, Apple could put Skype out of business with it’s marketing muscle. Apple would love to port this to the PC (a la iTunes) to pull VOIP business it’s way and sell more iPhones that way (since FaceTime will be Apple portable device only + MAC + PC).
I have TWO Skype subscriptions. One for home and one for work plus two Skype in numbers. Without background calls on the iPhone and am happy to look else where. Skype forced me to abandon Fring so I loaded Nimbuzz today.
Neil
“damaging our brand and reputation” LOL! What reputation??? You lost your reputation when you sold Skype to eBay, and now you’re selling e.g. “Skype Ringtones” and overprices accessories… Skype wasn’t meant to be a fu***** commercial whore like it is now.
BTW… this account “webster_04″ was created in 2004. Skype was really good THEN, a free VOIP pioneer. No eBay, no USA. And a very nice philosophy behind it. Now, the philosophy is gone, but MONEY (legal dudes like you Robert prove that) is ruling. I’m glad that there are other good companies with good products out there and I hope they will push you out of business…
“Dear” Skype,
you’re talking about fring “damaging your brand and reputation”?? WOW! Someone should be a complete idiot to even THINK about this! On the other side, please consider this: thousands of Android users used SKYPE TO CALL THROUGH THEIR ANDROID PHONES VIA FRING, also paying numbers, thinking “wow, skype allows us to use their protocol through Fring, great gentlemen, aren’t they!”, and now we cannot anymore. Oh wait, Fring’s decision to “withdraw support for video calls over Skype on iOS 4″ is what’s “damaging your brand and reputation”?? That’s quite funny, because actually this would damage FRING’S BRAND AND REPUTATION, since they did that, not Skype.
You sirs, are absolute morons. Instead of letting competition flow, you’ll perish under your idiot decisions.
Bye bye Skype. >:(
wow. over 200 enraged comments on this thread alone, and “nothing” is response from Skype? I guess that says it all.
I loaded Nimbuzz two days ago. It worked flawlessly for 24 hours. Now it will not connect…and Im seeing increasing reports from other people of the same problem. I know that asking here is pointless but I have to try. Skype, did you block them too?
Anyone have a Nimbuzz that is working with Skype??
After Skype being bought, I’d expect the company becomes more $$$ oriented.
Where is the Skype client for Android?
The whole unfriendly act from what I see is to hinder a “competitor” who can do faster and better than Skype.
If you are stepping away from innovation, you are stepping into your own tomb.
How arrogant and rude of skype! You dont support the most popular mobile clients around… neither Android nor Windows Mobile, and block companies that step into the customer-service vacuum that you leave behind? …With such ridiculous and frivolous excuses???
I have used skype loyally for over 5 years now, but with this callousness overnight, you have converted me from a loyal user to an outraged one! Shame on you!
Skype send out a Legal VP to talk PR instead of marketing folk – Looks like Skype’s turned evil. I’m sorry I buy the skype side of the story as much as I did the Iphone4 antenna algorithm bs.
Good luck in your new future!
VIDEO OPTIONS (videocalls or chat+video)
For all Skype abandoned mobile users I’m listing all video mobile apps I know. Maybe helpful.
Can do bidirectional video (video+voice or video+chat):
- Fring
- TiVi
- OctroTalk
- Damaka
- VZOchat
- iFon
- ImiChat
- SXmobi UM
Partially support already and say that will fully support in near feature:
- Barablu (already have unidirectional video)
- Flaphone (bidirectional video, but only present on desktops now. But as soon as Adobe release Flash Player v10 for mobiles it’ll be available next day)
Some of those are already present on desktops and/or mobiles, but on a strong way yet. But this can change in almost no time, for instance by Flaphone that is a frog now but can be a prince as soon as Adobe kiss it.
Hope this help you all.
Well, it might be damaging your brand, but since I don’t have another way to use Skype on my phone I’ll most certainly switch to another VOIP application. That means no more Skype Credit from me (and the other Fring users) anymore. That damages your wallet and I believe that that is even worse than brand damage.
Even if you release an Android app soon I don’t know if I’ll switch back, I have all the messaging programs plus the Skype service in the same app.
What’s now? Simply ignore the users?
Are you guys waiting to see if the comments can reach 1000?
Is this a serious company?
Why we don’t have response or the releases that you guys say?
Skype has blocked all third party applications that I have tried (or they’ve blocked me!). Ive tried Nimbuzz, Truphone, ringfree, and IM+. Not ONE connects a Skype call. Anyone know of one that actually works?
My question to skype is, if you say that this is damaging to your brand and reputation why dont you develop your own video calling features for your smartphone apps, this is the reason why many people flocked to apps like fring because they offered live video calling from your smartphone, your mobile app does not support this and it is a major issue.
Yep the posts above say it all:
1/ Screw your users – not only the free-riders but those using your paid services such as Skype Out – all due to Skype’s inability to develop the product according to your customer’s needs. Good recipe for bankruptcy.
2/ Drop Windows Mobile and blame the platform instead of your software! Sounds like toddler tantrums. Second good recipe for bankruptcy.
We have 2 accounts with you but now it’s time to say bye bye Skype. You can sit on your money pot and see it drain ’cause you ain’t getting a cent more from me. Many other users making the same decision too by the look of things.
HELLO FRING AND OTHER VOIP COMPANIES – Here’s a vacant customer coming!
Skype needs to be government regulated. They have gotten too arrogant and ignore and harm the interest of their customers when ever they please. If this was a company based in the US they would have consumer complaints up the wazooo
INSIDE INFORMATION …. SKYPE has decided they are way too big and want to reduce their size significantly. So all the complaining is good news…Figure about 1000 patrons dropping them per complaint on this blog. They are hoping someone else will takeover their domination of the voip industry. Anyway, that is my take on their stupidity.
nobody will goto any third party software if skype release their own software that will support ios4 for iphone and others.
Fring allow to make voice and video calls using a lot of providers like skype or gmail – but Skype is not allow video and voice calls onto a lot of mobile devices.
- Skype did broke fring feature – people will use now another provider GTalk or something else. Skype did broke fring support why Skype did not made support of mobile devices voice/video calls before ? Very very bad news from skype.
I have been a paying customer for 5 years and actually feel priviledged to be able to use Skype on my N900 but I won’t be using it when current subscription runs out.
Used Fring on previous phones as there was video capabilities and no Skype application at the time. This latest move by Skype shows how lacking in imagination they really are: slow development and fast bucks!!
Time to move on.
The only thing I can say right now is:
F*ck u skype…
Really, how can ANYONE have such a lack of marketing vision…
i mirror many of the comments here… fring was not damaging to your reputation, you damage it yourself. fring’s iphone application is completely superior to yours, instead of shutting them out, maybe you ought to learn from them
btw: i’m not paying for your 3G subscription calling, i’ll find alternatives
And on this moment no way to use skype on my i5700 andriod! If skype was avalable for my mobile I did not have to use Fring. So, there’s something to say to two compagnies I think. The Skype survey I filled in today gives me some hope Skype will come with an alternative!
Kind regards,
H. Joosten
Eindhoven NL
If this is all Fring’s fault, then why did Nimbuzz get dropped, too? I never had the slightest problem with call quality on Nimbuzz. The only disappointing thing now is that I lost the best option I had to call my family while I’m deployed overseas. Thanks a lot.
I am deeply disappointed in Skype by its unwillingness to work cooperativly with fring to resolve the issue. fring has introduced a lot of innovative featueres, which Skype can not support yet. It was the perfect addition to Sykpe. Now let’s see how long Skype needs to introduce push service and video calling support for the iphone. Serveral years seem realistic to do it the leagal way.
why can’t fring and skype try to reach an amicable resolution by turning the videocall off, as this seems to be the biggest problem, and carry on with the service as before? fring was the best, there is nobody that can offer an app as good as fring. nimbuzz is trying to be the new fring but it will never get there, with skype and facebook allways disconnecting, it doesn’t have a auto=reconnect between wi-fi and 3g, etc, etc, etc…
please skype and fring do something…
always the best its coperation from both sides, but if is not posible skype need to develop a software or application for other divices, like android on sprint ….
Just forget Skype. Fring does not support it anymore. Nimbuzz either. Fring probably will now put all their efforts to release a MSN and/or Gtalk and/or SIP voice+video version. And then Skype is dead on mobile world. And a few months latter also on desktop world due to this. RIP.