Maven Mapper's

This morning I woke up to a world without Skype.  Skype hasn't gone bankrupt like competitor SunRocket, but they do have a major glitch that prevents users like myself from successfully logging into the Skype system.

They have been having problems for at least 5 hours as I write this at 5:16 am US est.  They thought things were getting better around 2 am, but for the users that can not login it doesn't matter much. 

Using Blogs to appease customers facing an Outage

I have to give Kudos to Skype for using their blog to communicate very regular updates to their customers around the world.    As of the writing of this message, they have posted 5 blog updates on the problem since they announced the problem 7 hours ago.  Its a great example of how companies can stay on top of a problem, demonstrate they are staying on top of a problem and curb customer discontent during a service outage.

Skype has been dueling Vonage for real estate in the VOIP industry.  Skype captured an early lead in Europe and spread to the states, while Vonage focused on the US and looked to spread elsewhere. 

Vonage experienced major legal issues this year as some of their technology according to the courts belonged to Verizon and things were touch and go for a few months for Vonage, which came close to being forced to shut their doors.