Anyone who has been watching Oprah lately may have noticed her increasing use of the synchronous communication tool, Skype, to connect with guests on her show. Yesterday she went a step further and devoted a whole show to the technology. Her “Where the Skype are you?” episode connected a host of people from scientists in Antarctica, to travelers on Virgin Airlines, to shoppers in Harrod’s department store in London.
Is Oprah doing this to save money by not having to fly guests to the show? Or is she possibly making some money through this endorsement? Maybe a little of both, but it appears this is yet another example of Oprah hyping up a new technology. Perhaps it will work. When Oprah exclaimed her love for Amazon’s Kindle, interest and sales spiked, and when Oprah joined Twitter last month, she had one million followers in 28 days with a jump in Twitter traffic by 43% in the period following that episode. Could the same happen for Skype?
I was only able to catch the last 10 minutes of the show, but watching Oprah taste wine with the owner of the Bonny Doon Winery proved less than exciting. When Oprah asked shoppers at Harrod’s if they had previously heard of Skype, all of them had. Will this show make them want to try it out? I also heard a lot of Skype hype before I ever used the service. After using it for the first time, I was very impressed with the clarity (at least with one on one conversations) and ease of the service. What was most interesting to me in watching Oprah on Skype was that none of the participants were using headsets, but the audio was still amazingly clear and free of feedback or echo. Is Oprah really using some sort of SuperSkype? Oprah also started a Skype webcast based around the book, “A New Earth: Get Ready to Be Awakened” by Eckhart Tolle. While there was extreme interest in the webcast, technical difficulties prevented it from getting very far on its first go-round. While any “Oprah effect” Skype serge may only be temporary, perhaps this is the beginning of a stronger interest in VOIP?
