Skype shows heart beat: am I still alive?

Online telephone service Skype has been down for two weeks and extensively wrote about this at its special web log heartbeat (mf). Brands are communicating real time, more directly. More and more often we will have services from a distance, available 24/7, 365 days a year. Service we blindly count on. Whether it is our TV (video) provider (our personal media brand), our contact provider (our personal contact brand), our telecoms provider, or our travel assistant (our personal travel brand): it just has to be there, always and everywhere. As soon as something stops working, we want to know what is going on into great detail. Not that everybody will read everything in detail, but who wants to, can do it. This way brands become more open, transparent, and accessible. This is a great example of things going in that direction.