Article Category: Troubleshooting
Article Date: 07-19-2008

Nearly all contacts found by MM are offline, why?

At the very beginning of this project we thought it would be a very cool feature to search for people currently online and initiate a "discussion" with them...

One of the things that was puzzling was we never seemed to be able to find anyone currently online... but we finally thought it through and know the answer.

The thing to remember is this: Skype is a permission based instant messaging system and there are a few things to note about how Skype works.

1. Skype users implicitly give us permission to send them a message by leaving their chat option set to allow messages from people not on their contact list (see Tools, Options, Chats & SMS). Oh, and by the way, if a person gives permission to contact them how on earth could that be considered spamming?


2. Skype will only show you the online status of someone if they have added you to their contact list or if they are in SkypeMe mode. Prior to being added on their contact list all you will be able to see is a question mark (?) beside their name... and MessageMagic simply states they are offline.


3. The net effect is this -> when you search for online people the search will only show someone as being online if they happen to have already added you to their contact list or if they are in SkypeMe mode.


4. Again, as I've stated many times before, the most effective way to use MessageMagic is to search for users, add them as contacts, build a relationship with your new contacts, and then use the broadcast feature for sending messages to specific Skype Contact Groups.

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