I just read on IP Democracy that Skype is on a slow but steady rise. They are running into problems monetizing their services partially because the PC-to-PC calls are free, so it’s hard to make it up in volume. But the PC-to-phone calls do cost money. And the number of subscribers is rising.

I was a big Skype user last year when I was in Ireland. The quality of the calls is not always great – but the price is. But I think the reason Skype is slowing rising is because of Oprah.

Oprah now has guests join them the program via Skype. So now every Oprah fan knows what Skype is – that’s a lot of potential subscribers.

So in my quest for the killer app, Skype is a contender, partially because I like it and partially because with the sign of approval from Oprah I think they’ll have a critical mass of users soon. I have to add that the quality of service is always better on Oprah than it was for me in Dublin.