August 19, 2007

Some People Benefited From the Skype Outage

Duncan Riley

40 comments »

Alexa stats up to August 17 show a massive rise in traffic to Skype competitor Gizmo Project and a more modest rise for Grand Central at the peak of this weeks 36 hour Skype outage.

The SIPphone owned Gizmo Project offers a nearly identical package to Skype, but with added features including built in recording, and cross platform compatibility. Gizmo’s traffic tripled in the space of three days and rose to a rank of 8,561 in Alexa from a 3 month average of 19,102.

The Google owned Grand Central offers a one number everywhere telephone service. Whilst the service doesn’t compete with Skype in the softphone market, the service does provide functionality that competes with Skype services such as Skype In. According to Alexa, Grand Central hit a 4 week high on Friday with a 33% increase in rank over its 3 month average.

Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 at 6:39 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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Chris

August 19th, 2007 at 6:53 am

Could you guys get on the same page, sometimes your using Alexa sometimes your abusing Alexa. It takes away from your credibility and beyond that its annoying.
Patou

August 19th, 2007 at 6:58 am

But Alexa is useless, isn’t it ? http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....yre-wrong/
Duncan Riley

August 19th, 2007 at 7:14 am

Alexa is hopeless to a point: website comparisons in particular, although in my own opinion it’s no less flawed than other companies in this space, all are flawed in their sampling audiences to various extents. Alexa has a bias towards tech and SEO, competing services use Internet Accelerators bundled with other software that only works on Windows machines (and that according to some is Malware)

Alexa is however good at showing trends and traffic increases in recent times for individual sites. No other publicly available tool provides stats from 1-2 days prior, comScore and Compete in particular all have long delays in releasing stats….short form: it is good for something
Brett

August 19th, 2007 at 7:32 am

I love how Mike just rips Alexa apart and then you use it as the total basis for a point. This makes little sense to me.
mark

August 19th, 2007 at 7:36 am

I’ve watched the gizmo project for a few years now. They need to invest 15 minutes thinking about a better name. Seriously.
Mario Ruiz

August 19th, 2007 at 8:08 am

Good Afternoon Duncan,

Options. It is all about options. When one door is closed, other is open. This is much more constructive post than other blogs, insulting or just judging the entire industry for the last 3 days of Skype.

When we have options, we have also opportunities to take advantage as a user or as a competitor. I can’t stop wonder, how long Gizmo has been waiting for this opportunity.

Here in Spain, where I am passing August, they say, “the virgin appeared to them.” Hope Gizmo take advantage for everyone benefit.

Mario Ruiz
@ http://www.oursheet.com
A Million Dollar Girl

August 19th, 2007 at 8:08 am

Bad news for somebody always implies good news for others.
Have you investigated voipcheap.com?
Allen Stern

August 19th, 2007 at 8:32 am

While there was an increase for grandcentral, they were up for the entire 7 day period before the skype outage in the same pattern as for the days following. In addition, they have let many customers know on thursday that their phone number will be changing and to log in to their account to find the new one. This would account for the major boost in traffic.

While Gizmo went up, we don’t know if this was the only factor that played into it. In addition, it would be good to track for say 10 days following the outage to see if there is any residual traffic. Many sites (i think this one included) pointed people to additional sites and so naturally they would see a spike. They key is whether any of that traffic remains past the skype outage. That’s a story.

This reminds me of your eBay stock price analysis.

Here is a 7 day chart - which would make more sense in this analysis.
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....oject.com/

As you can see from the chart, gc didn’t go up any faster than it had the entire week, while yes gizmo went up, again we need to look for at least 10 days to see if the spike really helped at all.
Derrick

August 19th, 2007 at 8:32 am

Well I wish Duncan had put his explanation about him using Alexa data in the original blog post. Probably saved some people from commenting about the “contradiction”.
Ben Simo

August 19th, 2007 at 8:37 am

And I suspect that old fashioned and VOIP phone companies benefited. I had to actually pick up the phone and dial to talk to a friend on the other side of the world. It cost me more and the quality was worse than Skype. Now I appreciate Skype more than I did before the outage.

Ben Simo
http://QuestioningSoftware.com
Ali

August 19th, 2007 at 9:44 am

Contradictory points of view about a stats service just end up making no point in the end. You guys need to figure yourselves out.
ihero

August 19th, 2007 at 10:06 am

Perhaps Skype was hacked and then a routine was run to add hits to the grandcentral cite. Now who would want that to happen?
Ray Burt

August 19th, 2007 at 10:20 am

TC’s credibility is on the hook with this whole (Alexa is useless — except when we decide it supports a point we want to make and in that case it’s not) thing.

Michael, et. al…..time to do what you call upon others to do all the time.

Step up and do the right thing…however you do it, just make sure you are consistent! Otherwise, many will just look at postings here differently from now on — not as a studiously unbiased, accurate source of information but rather just another blog using selective data and reasoning to support your hypothesis (and wondering for what purpose!).
A Million Dollar Girl

August 19th, 2007 at 10:34 am

@Ray, I think there are two possibilities:

1- You have a very bad day.
2- You didn’t understand anything.

Kisses!
Ray Burt

August 19th, 2007 at 10:47 am

Million Girl @14:

Since neither is true, perhaps you can explain your thinking behind the comment?
A Million Dollar Girl

August 19th, 2007 at 11:03 am

@Ray looks like you were angry with Duncan, or even with Techcrunch in general.
My explanation is simple, like the one written by Duncan where he uses a very common page, Alexa, to present the trends during the last days of both Skype rivals.
I think you, me, and even the rest of readers, including Duncan, perfectly know that Alexa data is not perfect, is just an estimated statistic although one of the best tools to analyze trends.
In my opinion, is better shut up than comment in so angry way.

Kisses!
Ray Burt

August 19th, 2007 at 11:13 am

@Milion…thanks for the explanation.. Hard to see my original post as “angry” — rather, reasonsed. I am not the one who uses such angry phrases as “shut up”…and “you don’t understand anything”. I’ll let the readers decide who is angry here.

Now to the substance: Duncan’s explanation (which you say you share) is remeniscent of standard back-peddling when one is caught in uncomfortable situation. It’s akin to politician’s tyring to weasel out of something that is, plainly to me (and evidently the majority of posters who have weighed in on this exact issue — therefore contradicting your other point) a mistake.

I simply asked Michael, et. al., to address this once and for all right away….not in a comment by the originator in the post that some can see as addressing only part of the issue. Why can’t folks just say “hey, made a mistake”.
A Million Dollar Boy

August 19th, 2007 at 11:41 am

#14: I agree with Ray, this is a completely useless comment, and borders on ad hominem (get it ?)
Goo Goo

August 19th, 2007 at 11:44 am

@Dunkin…

Compete releases daily statistics for certain metrics.

Here is daily Attention charted (updated last 08/17):

http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....etric=attD

There is no real spike in Compete data for these two domains.
Billy

August 19th, 2007 at 11:48 am

Alexa tool bar is pretty useless. If these measurements were accurate; all the competing stats from neilsen ratings, comscore, alexa, and compete would not deviate so much from each other. There simply isn’t a tool that comes even close to your own weblog stats.
Goo Goo

August 19th, 2007 at 11:51 am

For those interested in finding more about the differences between Alexa, Compete, etc.. this is a useful comparison summary: http://www.compete.com/help#snp2
Blake Brannon

August 19th, 2007 at 2:21 pm

Assuming the Alexa stats are even right, I am going to say Skype will only temporarily be loosing customers. As soon as all the problems are fixed, they will be back.
boo boy

August 19th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

seriously, this is a big dent in the credibility of TC

The moment i saw this post, the first question came to mind was what: a few days ago, Michael has “BLASTED” Alexa and now one of the writers is using Alexa as a basis of his story.

So, there are three logical conclusions I can make:

a) Duncan and Michael differ on the legitimacy of Alexa data: This is perfectly normal. People disagree. In this case, I would I would like to see a joint post by MA and DR arguing it out. I am always open for a logical debate between two experts so please oblige your readers

b) Duncan wasn’t aware of Michaels’ post: This is also fair. We all have so many things going on in daily life that we are not really aware of everything that surrounds us. Take the Internet for example, so many posts, so little time to read them. This is why you look towards a blog such as TC that you can trust. In this case, I would appreciate an updated response from DR. Duncan, for your readers, please submit a detailed explanation arguing the comments in MA earlier post rather than a comment. Again, as in (a) above, we know you got the answer - just help us stupid readers understand this please

c) Duncan knew the post but didn’t care: In fact, one could go with the conspiracy theory that Duncan and Michael had planned this ages ago so readers could get all riled up (or O’Reilly’ed up as I would put it), would get mad at the blog, comment on this, talk about it and thus increase the readership #’s…all in all, increasing revenue potential for TC. Although this is possible, I really do not believe it to be completely true. Michael is a hard-working and smart man and I can’t think of reasons why he would do this. He has leadership in TC from other news outlets that always deliver honest news (yes, I mean FOX) and he has put his sweat and blood into raising TC. Why would he either risk the reputation of TC himself or let one of his authors do it?

Thoughts folks?
Matthew F

August 19th, 2007 at 4:49 pm

Adding to what Allen Stern said, GrandCentral also sent out a whole bunch of new beta invites last week, which is a solid explanation for its week-long increase in traffic.

As Duncan Riley notes in the article, GrandCentral doesn’t meaningfully compete with Skype. Seems like that should be plenty of reason to not compare traffic.
Andy Fox

August 19th, 2007 at 5:54 pm

i think people just don’t realize all the skype alternatives out there:

http://misanthropytoday.wordpr.....ernatives/
Tcruncher2

August 19th, 2007 at 6:03 pm

Who cares ffs. Its just a simple comparison to highlight what everyone knew would happen anway. I can’t believe some of you fks on TechCrunch bother to argue about this.

Here’s a point for you:
- If a very popular service shts itself, then its competitors are going to get more popular during this period.

WOW - what genius thought of that one ? Lucky I patented it, so I can now develop a website around it.

Idiots …..
David Mackey

August 19th, 2007 at 6:06 pm

I’m considering using Gizmo just for a backup in case Skype fails.
maya

August 19th, 2007 at 6:51 pm

I have preferred gizmo over skype, it offers free outgoing and incoming when used with grandcentral. (http://www.grandcentral.com/howitworks/gizmo)
Emre Sokullu

August 19th, 2007 at 6:56 pm

“Gizmo Project offers a nearly identical package to Skype, but with added features including built in recording, and cross platform compatibility.”

Skype is cross platform too
boo boy

August 19th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

@Tcruncher2:

I am so jealous that you patented it. Now you will be rich!

The first thing you should do with your money: either buy yourself a pair of glasses or pay someone who can translate English for you.

Most of the discussion in the comments is not focused around who lost or who won. It is around the use of Alexa data to support the argument.

If your comment wasn’t directed at folks who discussed that aspect of this post, please accept my apologies.
Paul

August 19th, 2007 at 9:07 pm

Blake, you are probably 80-90% correct, for today. It’s common for service problems like this to effect an equivalent defection (equivalent to the severity of the problem, and in this case it wasn’t that bad… only 36 hours). So most of the people who temporarily went to Gizmo, other similar services or even the POT lines, will probably go back to Skype, but they won’t forget the outage and the inconvenience. A smaller percentage will find that they like another service better for one reason or another, or maybe the outage caused them particular headaches for some reason, and these people may jump ship to the alternative.

What will be more dangerous for Skype is if they don’t quickly learn from this, and prevent it from happening again, any time soon at least. And, as the Om Malik pointed out, Skype really needs to own these problems and be responsible for the problems it caused its users, and not go hide under a rock.

Maybe they need to go study the text book Tylenol PR disaster management campaign (this obviously was not nearly as horrible as that, but they should have taken those obvious steps even if people weren’t dying, just for the sake of saving their business and keeping their customers informed and satisfied that the company cares about them). Their no-show response is nothing short of insensitive and shows a complete lack of integrity. It didn’t effect me, though I am a Skype user. However, I will be looking at alternatives just because of the way they handled the whole thing.
Andrew

August 20th, 2007 at 5:12 am

Ever consider the traffic to gizmoproject.com and grandcentral are due to SunRocket leaving it’s customers in the lurch.
Omadsense

August 20th, 2007 at 5:23 am

I remember you having an article that said Alexa was usless? Why use it in this article?

I personally like Alexa……
Atul

August 20th, 2007 at 9:11 am

Hmm… regardless of Alexa’s accuracy (or lack of).. the graph looks a it funny.

Am I the only one to notice that the left hand scale looks, umm, rather inverted?? If it indeed is, what does it say about GrandCentral?

More importantly.. about Alexa itself?

Curiously,
-a
Louis-Eric

August 20th, 2007 at 3:20 pm

The left-hand scale represents your rank within the Alexa dataset; the better you do, the lower your rank number is. This leads to perhaps odd, yet usefully-represented, graphs.