Skype Etiquette
Friday, February 09, 2007
I'd like to begin a bit of a chat about Skype etiquette. Most of us use it more and more because after all, who wants to be faced with a massive phone bill for dealing with overseas calls, and those interminably long mobile calls - to the UK, US, etc?
But I do think it's time that we 'all' agreed on some form of etiquette. It can be quite annoying when you've left a skype IM chat and it keeps beeping to bring you back . . . or when people on the other end of a skype voice chat don't give it that mili second to kick in.
I'd like to get the ball rolling by making a rule about closing skype IM chats. When the person who called you says things like, "Bye Now", "Talk to you later", "Ciao", or "See ya". . . . the polite action is to respond in 1 line - you may choose to use words echoing that of the person who called, or icons ;-) or a combination of both.
Person 1: I have to go now. Bye.
Person 2: Bye
[At this stage person 1 is making to leave skype and on to some other application]
Person 2: Have a great evening
[Person 1 feels they ought to respond out of politeness]
Person 1: Yes. You too. Bye now.
Person 2: I'm looking forward to working with you on this project.
[Person 1 is getting a bit irritated. They've had to leave their other app again. Person 1 chooses to ignore this comment because after all they've said good bye twice, pleasantly.]
A few seconds pass....person 1 is working on a document elsewhere. . . the skype thing starts jumping up and down (mac users will know what this means)
Person 2: That's it from me. See ya!
[Person 1's blood pressure gets a little high. If Skype let you do a virtual hand to talk to, Person 1 would be doing it right now]
You see this kind of thing isn't necessary. When someone says see ya, know that it means: get off of my screen now, you and your skype avatar, I'm done with you, moving on.
Have you got any other points of etiquette to add?
3 Comments:
I find pulling the network or power cord (accidentally of course) to most effective way to stop these kind of Cringeworthy situations.
Paul
By Paul Browne - TIPE, at 6:22 PM
What about when to use smileys and when not?
By , at 6:33 PM
Starting a new group chat with the same people who were chatting a few hours ago instead of finding the old chat in the menu. Grrrr. I have normally left the old window open, hence my dislike of the new window appearing.
By , at 4:24 PM