Lesson from Kazaa/Skype/Joost

Sipping through a cup of hot coffee (with much more sugar than neccessary) and reading through this article was a wonderful treat to start a week. It discussed how Skype-like phenonmenon has had a significant impacts on the global business model.

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are the ones behind all these. Firstly, they wrote Kazaa, then sold them for big money, just to go and develop Skype for more money. And now Joost (originally known as The Venice Project) looks like the right one to put your money on. These guys have looked at the industries and seen big monsters sitting in the middle, monopolizing the market. And they tackled them head-on. Kazaa countered the music/recording industry, Skype dealt with the telecom operators, and Joost is believed to do the same to the TV/entertainment industry.

In all cases, Niklas and Janus solution was to not to rely on these providers, and harness the resources from individuals. And as it said, "the results was explosive". Kazaa, for instance, was the place where users can freely trade musics and records (at least until it was attacked). Skype has gradually bypassed the well-establish telecommunications operators, and become an incredible tool for real-time voice communication. Though Joost is still on its beta testing, it has already presented great threats to the current TV entertainment industry.

After all, the lesson here is that not only does techonology improve the current economics (efficiency, productivity), but it could also totally change/revolutionize the entire model. Music, TV, telecom has already been tackled ? What's left ? or what's next ?