Interactive Media Strategies believes Microsoft could win big with Skype

Interactive Media Strategies (IMS) is a market research firm that follows streaming media. They discuss the news of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, and the prospects for Skype to emerge as a viable platform for business video communications. 

Their research compares usage levels for a range of social media and communications applications, including Skype, YouTube and Facebook. Here is a link to the video.

They report that personal use of Facebook and YouTube is relatively high but that has not yet translated into comparable levels of corporate use. They believe this raises the question of whether YouTube and Facebook will be able to outgrow their focus on the consumer side of the business to compete in the enterprise market.

Usage levels for Skype are significantly lower overall, but Skype’s penetration in business communications is higher than they see for other communications apps online among young users most likely to experiment with emerging technologies.

IMS puts forth the opinion that if Microsoft could make it easier for technology laggards to embrace Skype - i.e. integrate Skype with the Microsoft Office suite - then Skype could achieve significant enterprise adoption.