The Perceived Unpopularity of Skype in the US

I have been using Skype for at least three years now and was, initially, sold on the fact that it goes way beyond the normal messengers like MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AOL and others in the fact that it just plain works and has voice and video applications that work better than anything I have seen. As an administrator I have used it to contact students and parents at no cost to my school. I have used it to display real-time video from a scientist in Australia who studies spiders. For $30 a year you can call out to any phone in the US and Canada. Pretty cool stuff. It is more secure than any other messenger with its 256-bit encryption that not even the CIA can tap. Skype also has a voice mail option and a call-in option, but these two options will cost you. So what is free, well, you can call to any other Skype user, this is where you will find this great tool very unpopular. It is unpopular in the US because it is in competition with MSN and Yahoo Messenger who have been greatly popular in this country for over ten years. Try to get a relative or friend in their 30's and 40's to download and install the client so you can communicate freely is like asking them to give a pound of flesh. I have spoken with plenty of people who are daily users of Skype that have faced the same problem with trying to convince people how useful a communication tool this can be. Just try it. It can save you a lot of money in long distance calls, it is quicker than email, and you can transfer files by dropping an dragging them to the chat window of your contact. Check it out here: http://www.skype.com