Skype Roadmap

Having used Skype for quite a while now (I first heard about it in the summer of 2004), there are things I like about it and things I don't.
I have also spent the last 10 years working in the Telecomms industry as a Technical Architect and Product Strategist/Manager, so one of the things I would really love to see is their roadmap.
In the absence of anything better to do on a Sunday morning and as a welcome time-out from playing with my 1 year old daughter, I thought I would have a go at producing my own.
As this is a blog, it's very much 'first draft'.... ;)
First thing is to determine the themes, looking for market trends and needs to how they fit the brand and ethos of the company.
Let's put a few words out there: Share, Presence, Talk, Partner, Community, Organise, mobility, Emergency, Video, Message, Collaborate, Conference.
Ok, here's how I would see the themes/categories
- Skype in/is the Community
- Hypercommunication, Free yourself!
- Share the Wealth

The items I would put under each of these are just a few of the things I'd like to see, but would be the things I think would push Skype out to more people, hopefully attaining critical mass.
- Skype in/is the Community

• Allow multiple profiles, separated by Community, user signs into a specific community. Ideally users should be able to create their own communities and define the profile fields. Enables businesses to use Skype as well. Community presence should be manageable within the community (this is debateable for Skype to be a commercial enterprise)
  
• Create a proof of concept with Emergency services in one area, for complete communication. E.g. Conference with you, ambulance and central office as they attempt to reach you. (also under Hypercommunication)
  
• Expand Personalisation and Organisation of contacts and Skype application - skins and contact 'notes' (add details on the person)

- Hypercommunication

• Call forwarding without relay; enable creation of rules to forward communication based on source and destination. e.g. a call arrives from Community (see above) X and is routed to mobile phone after 3 rings or if presence is not 'open'
  
• Application and file synchronisation (a la Groove)
• Personal RSS/Atom within community - ability to be alerted to changes in community profile. E.g. Community profile may contain links to recent blog postings/comments
• Ability to assign SkypeIn numbers to a community
  

- Share the wealth

• Initiate Premium Rate Skype Ids; Operate the same way as PSTN numbers, i.e. appear as SkypeOut, but revenue is split between Skype and provider. Premium rate should be a community attribute, i.e. the same id can be free or premium depending on the community presence that initiated the call (but they would have to be controlled by Skype)
• Enable Sharing of credit on SkypeOut; create a transfer balance function using the authorisation mechanism as a basis, i.e. request for balance initiates outside and is authorised by the balance sender. Using APIs a 'push' mechanism could be developed if needed.
• Put Skype on a Router, with remote configuration. With the features defined above, plus the Skype Router, just about everything can be done.

This is not an exhaustive list and I left out a couple of things that I might want to do myself.
The items above come down to one architectural change, i.e. implementation of communities, with a few simple added features at the community level to enable some new forms of communication.
Let's hope we see some of it at least.