My recent blog post on Skype and Logitech inspired one of Skype’s bloggers, Villu Arak, to locate this history of picture phones.   If you look through the history, you’ll notice several different jobs that were being proposed for the picture phones: business communication, grandparents staying connected with grandchildren, soldiers calling home.  While AT&T’s initial implementations failed, the jobs still needed to be done.

This post by Villu confirms that fact, as he writes about some of the ways that Skype is being used today:

Distant lovers enjoying dinner — and each other’s company — over a free video call.

Local-government officials replacing meetings with multichats.

Homesick soldiers keeping a line open with their families.

It reminds me of work that I did several years ago with a company called Innosight, leveraging a Jobs-To-Be-Done methodology for product development.  It seems that Skype is well along the path of thinking this way.  In addition, Skype is using blogs to keep an open line of communications with customers, who can be the most significant source of innovation.