Three Weddings and a Funeral

It is no sequel to the Hugh Grant movie. Rather it's about some interesting news tidbits that popped up in the last few days.

The three weddings are certainly special in their own ways. First country singer Chely Wright married girlfriend Lauren Blitzer. Then Kim Kardashian married basketball player Kris Humphries. Thirdly, startup company GroupMe got married to Skype, which in turn is in the process of getting married to Microsoft.

If the third wedding sounds a bit like a soap opera that has been running for more than two decades and parading bold men and beautiful women, it is no surprise. This is because Skype is certainly a bold company and GroupMe is by all means a beautiful firm. Of course GroupMe is more beautiful than Kim, though Skype may not be as bold as Chely.

Why is GroupMe so beautiful? It is capable of enabling people to message for free using the mobile device. Anything for free is beautiful, especially in these times of economic turmoil. GroupMe is only one year old. It has already obtained more than $11.5 million from General Catalyst Partners, Khosla Ventures and Lerer Ventures.

It is delivering more than 100 million messages each month. Its specialty, group messaging, is popular with young users and definitely of deep interest for Skype. Facebook also is launching its own application.

Agreed that GroupMe is beautiful. Buy why is Skype not bold enough? You might wonder whether the talk is about the same bold Skype which initiated the revolution of voice and video calls over the Internet. Certainly it was extremely bold when it started but not at the moment. This is simply because it could not resist the multibillion-dollar offer from Microsoft. A bold man never sells his home. That is an old proverb from the land where the fossils of oldest human ancestor was discovered.

Many of Skype's 175 million users may belong to the legions of haters of Microsoft products. Certainly yours truly knows a few of them for sure. Are these users to change their loyalty from Skype once it becomes a Microsoft product? For them Skype has done an act of betrayal by selling it to Microsoft. So it has to be said Skype is not bold enough to stand in front of Chely. Anyway, by getting married to GroupMe it is hoped that Skype will get back some of its lost boldness. It will be helping Skype become an important player in providing mobile communication services not dependent on a computer.

So what about the funeral? Did that funeral news go unnoticed amid wedding jubilation? You bet it has not. Ask any of the WalMart store keeper and he will sure give the answer. It is the funeral of HP tablets being observed in these stores. There are lots of visitors (customers) who are literally paying to pay their last homage to a product which they never cared about when it was young and healthy. Of course the funeral of HP tablet is in full swing. A 16GB unit will cost a mere $99. If the customer is greedy he can have the 32GB unit for $149.