Skype Blocking/San Jose U. Story Addendum

I haven't been commenting directly on this story, where San Jose State University had been pushing to block on Skype on campus, and by extension, other broadband-based applications stood to be at risk. On that note, I mentioned about how this could include video calling services such as SightSpeed, an emerging market leader that I have been following.

This comment happened be part of a post where I was lauding SightSpeed's recent success as being chosen the top video calling app by PC Magazine. That issue is now online, and you can read more about it here.

I'm revisiting this because some clarity is needed on the SJSU issue. I won't get into the technical details - that's not my thing - but in short, not all forms of peer-to-peer are based on the Skype model. Others can explain this better than me, but I wanted to share some commentary on this from Peter Csathy, SightSpeed's CEO. In true Web 2.0 fashion, Peter walks the talk, and provides a nice update on things via a video message.

Aside from the fact that this clip demonstrates SightSpeed's quality very nicely, about halfway into the message, Peter provides a short explanation of how SightSpeed does not use super nodes the way Skype does, which makes theirs a purer, more direct form of P2P. One benefit here is that SightSpeed will not have the firewall blocking problems that Skype runs up against in large institutions. Since SightSpeed does voice as well as video, it stands to be a better enterprise solution. By all means, watch the clip - it's just a few minutes, and you'll see for yourself.

While I've got you, SightSpeed is really on a roll. Check out this posting from Andy Abramson that just broke late last night. MTV is now using SightSpeed on its Total Request Live program. This demographic will totally get what SightSpeed is all about, and it's an ideal place to showcase the technology. This is a great company to watch, folks.


Technorati tags: SightSpeed, Jon Arnold, Andy Abramson