Battle of the Brands: Facetime Vs Skype

It’s been about five months since people haven’t really stepped out of their homes for social contact with others. Even though that degree of isolation is unhealthy on a mental level, it is the need of the hour. But people have ensured that they stay in touch with their near and dear ones thanks to technology. Whatsapp is undoubtedly the market leader here, but for the sake of having a level playing ground, we decided to look at Skype and Facetime since both have been around for a while and are well known products. 

 

Talkwalker, a social media analytics company, based in Luxembourg, provides information on the using their platform. Talkwalker Analytics analyses the performance of mentions all over the internet and provides key metrics such as engagement, related themes, demographic data, geographic data and influencer data. 

 

Mentions

 

 

Skype has over twice the number of mentions as Facetime. What’s interesting to note is that there is a peak in mentions for both of these at roughly the same time. For Facetime ( red), the peak coincides with Rishi Kapoor’s demise where his family shared emotional posts referring to his Facetime calls. For Skype, this peak has more to do with the launch of Google Meets, which has been positioned as a more secure alternative to Skype and Zoom. It’s interesting to note though that Facetime has a higher engagement than Skype.

 

Celebrities 

 

 

Let’s take a look at a new section – celebrities associated with these products. We have a very interesting selection here. For Facetime, apart from the Kapoor clan, we see a lot of international celebrities and for Skype, there is a larger percentage of Indian celebrities/influencers. What is interesting to see is that Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg are prominently featured in the celebrity clouds for both brands.

 

Demographics

 

 

For both apps, it’s important to know who is creating the buzz. We see something very interesting here – for Facetime, the majority of the buzz comes from men, we see a much larger percentage of women talking about it as compared to Skype. Also in terms of age groups, millennials are the most prominent users of both apps, but Skype has a smaller percentage of Gen Z and a larger percentage of 35+ users than Facetime. 

 

Visual Insights

 

 

Skype and Facetime are both largely visual products – they are designed around the concept of video calls. So, this piece would be incomplete without comparing their visual insights. And it’s no surprise that their visual insight profiles are quite similar. For both Skype and Facetime, over 75% of the content contains images and over 20% contains video. Both apps are also mostly used indoors, but Skype has a larger percentage of content associated with the outdoors.