Newly appointed COO, Scott Durchslag sat down with Howard Wolinsky for the Skype Blog to discuss his new role, what brought him to the company and what Skype users can expect in the near future.

We will succeed or fail based on the decisions that we make now in terms of the culture that we want to build, the way the we remain true to the Skype brand while becoming great marketers, and how we create a really agile, innovative organization that can stay at this leading edge of where consumer technology really touches peoples lives. We need to build processes to scale and be able to respond to this massive number of consumers and business users. Those are the kinds of things that will kind of make or break the next level of success. It is both ours to win and ours to lose if we let ourselves get distracted.

At first glance, he’s saying all the right things and I’d like to spend some time bending his ear for Ink readers at some point in the near future.

Scott isn’t the only one with a new job at Skype. Skype’s main blog, once edited by the recently departed Villu Arak, has been picked up by Peter Parkes. Peter has been blogging to Skype UK readers since February of 2007 so he’s no stranger to his audience, but I wanted to congratulate him on the move nonetheless and wish the very best of luck to Villu.

Cheers,
RBH