Skype Journal: Man on the Skype Interviews: What does the eBay-Skype deal mean to you?
September 12, 2005 09:52 AMI asked my contacts "What does the eBay purchase mean for you and or your company?"
From Taiwan. A manufacturer of Skype hardware. He wouldn’t let me use his name.
"Actually, our eBay experience is terrible. I truly wish they (Skype) can become better... every email we sent to them is just like throwing a stone to the ocean. That is why I do not see any difference having eBay buy Skype."
From Sweden. Ben Isacsson:
"Yes a very, very new culture will emerge. At least for me. I will stay (with Skype) for a while - but only until I find a non US-owned program."From South Africa. John Sjolund
"To be honest I do not really think that it will impact our business much. We use Skype all the time in our business and love it. I am confident that this move will only mean that the product gets better.From the UK. Robin Batt, marketing consultant in VoIP space.
I think that it could involve very interesting revenue generating opportunities for other businesses through the use of papal credit as opposed to Skype credit. I think the incorporation of PayPal is golden.
I am hoping that they don't move it into an exclusively North American thing now however.
I am very excited by the prospect. I listened to the eBay webcast and was very impressed with the eBay people.
"I'm amazed and astounded. It doesn't make any sense at all! I just heard the news and am thinking it thru give me a few minutes....From Prague, Czech Republic. Robert Hernandez, a developer of a Skype enabled product for Columbus CRM.Well, first off, I guess that marks the end of the Internet ‘crash’ – or the beginning of a whole new bubble. Good news for the Internet industry (that someone would pay 2.6 BN for a company that's not yet turned a profit and only just starting to generate any revenue at all)
I have to say I can’t quite see the logic behind the marriage. Sure they can cross sell into each others' communities, but Skype hasn't exactly experienced problems with customer acquisition (maybe eBay has - I dont know). If this is all about enabling eBay buyers to talk to each other - and generating additional revenue from the voice calls, then:
a) I don’t see why they would buy Skype - why not build their own P2P voice functionality
b) I can see that generating some additional 'net new minutes' - but I don’t know that eBay users need to talk to each other, or how many would pay to do so (to justify that kind of a purchase price)
I might be being shortsighted, but I don’t quite get it. All of eBay's other recent acquisitions have been in the marketplace/ecommerce space – logical. Perhaps eBay were simply feeling left out of the VoIP hype/race with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc.
Also, it'll be interesting to see what they do with the brands....2 very powerful brands, but with really quite different brand values."
"Skype has undoubtedly fused with one gigantic community and infrastructure, ready to take on those 'other camps' currently making a lot of noise. If Skype's current partnering model holds up, we see great opportunities in relationship management and all the ideas going around this. This is 10+ in our scale."
From the UK. Marcus Williamson. Connectotel, the developer of a Skype SMS product.
"We hope that eBay's acquisition of Skype will mean a timely solution to the issue which all developers of services on Skype face, namely how to bill for services on the Skype network. As the owner of Paypal, Ebay already has expertise in the area of payment systems and has a well-defined eBay API and Paypal API. The next step for Skype/eBay should be to provide a payment API to allow developers to credit or debit a user's SkypeOut account for micropayments. Skype/Ebay would benefit by taking a percentage of each transaction, as Paypal already does.
Paypal API info:
Ebay API info:
From the UK. Martin Schoenenberger. Skype User and Swiss Investment Banker.
"Through this acquisition eBay gains a strong foothold in the the rapidly growing VOIP market. By joining the eBay, Paypal and Shopping.com platform, Skype will be able to aggressively expand their user population. The synergies will be enormous."From Estonia and Skype. Jaanus Kase, Blogger for Share Skype.
"A large part of the deal is the promise that Skype will stay independent, just as PayPal has. They got acquired by eBay some years ago but they're still operating fairly independently, joining forces with eBay at places where it's good for users, just as Skype will do. (Quote from Skype Forum: )
From the Skype Forum. Judging by the early feedback on the Skype Forum, it looks like a lot of people care. The results of the early poll (monitor it here ) sum up many of the comments so far by participants on the Skype Forum.
In your mind, is the eBay acquisition of Skype a good thing?
- Yes - 29% (8)
- No - 70% (19)
- I don't care - 0% (0)
Despite the negative poll numbers, most see it as an opportunity.
Many questions are answered in this eBay financial disclosure (pdf download). For an overview of the purchase visit this eBay investor relations page.
So eBay buys Skype. Who cares? I do. The road for the next year will be tough as cultures merge and evolve, but the end result will likely be very positive, as many developers above indicated. Skype will likely get the resources it needs to compete.
This is a shock. It touches all us Skypers. It appears end users are worried about the change; but most business people are embracing the opportunity.
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There will be a thousand stories today about eBay buying Skype - One Year Later. From a year ago: The original announcement. Man on the Skype Interviews: What does the eBay-Skype deal mean to you? Skype - Chapter 2. eBay and Skype: Back to basics. Sold... [Read More]
Tracked on September 11, 2006 11:02 PM
Comments (7)
FYI - here's an alternative analysis on the professional services opportunity this deal creates - you do well to highlight users' short-term concerns but there's a bright big picture here ... http://tinyurl.com/apeg5 ... enjoy.
Predictions:
1) eBay + Skype > dwarfs eBay's market
2) eBay + Skype > more profitable than eBay
3) insane ammount of jobs will be created globally if they get this right
Posted by: David Gibbons at September 12, 2005 12:08 PM
Jaanus stated that Skype would remain independent. This is great for users. Skype gets unlimited resources and has a platform to back it up. This is very good.
If I were telecoms, I would be more concerned than ever. Skype + EBay = Big Business.
Posted by: Rick at September 12, 2005 12:18 PM
Hey David!
Thanks for the URL and predictions. It is a very exciting moment in time.
Regards, Bill
Posted by: Bill Campbell at September 12, 2005 1:24 PM
Hey Rick!
Yes, that is what Jaanus said. I hope it turns out to be that way.
Thanks for dropping by again.
Regards, Bill
Posted by: Bill Campbell at September 12, 2005 1:31 PM
It sounds very useful to have the match between the behemoths. Loss of privacy for the individual Skype user is inevitable in such a transaction, which translate to loss of trust.
If you don’t mind loss of privacy then this is good thing.
Notably eBay is notorious for raising cost and rates of doing business with them. This is just a matter of time for Skype users. Other note is for eBay to do business in foreign country they will probably roll over under privacy rules just as Yahoo did in China.
http://www.physorg.com/news6368.ht
Posted by: Dan Enright at September 12, 2005 2:27 PM
Whisky Galore!
Zennström and Friis gathered as many bottles as they could.
Bill, you say “but the end result will likely be very positive”. Zennström has decided and accepted to resign as Skype’s boss and to report to eBay CEO Whitman. How long do you think Skype will stay independent and Zennström will do daily reports (with all the bottles gathered) 3, 6, 9 months?
We see large sums of money being flashed and my statement is “That table is definitely wrong”.
Posted by: scienceactive at September 12, 2005 3:00 PM
I am not really very happy and quite worried with this deal.
I was happy to see Skype as a European company providing a global encrypted and fast growing voice communication application. A real threat to the Telecom companies!
In Belgium we had once a fast growing world leader in voice recognition (Lernout and Hauspie). They bought some US competitors, and were represented in several continents. Then through some US started lawsuits (and indeed they had done some unforgivable mistakes), they had to close the business and sell each part back to US companies. The technology is now almost completely back in the USA. Some people explained this by saying that the technology was of most interest to USA security and Intelligence Agencies: the ability to "recognize" and translate immediately some potential interesting languages (Arabic? Korean? etc.) in English should stay in the US???? Imagine being able to tap a telephone conversation of Bin Laden and have an almost immediate written or vocal translation in English?
The same happens now with Skype (without lawsuits!): I only hope the technology will stay global, encrypted, free, without adware and spyware. I really hope they will keep a fair degree of independence. But i doubt it! The encryption of the voice is a real problem for Intelligence Services. What if Skype is somehow forced to allow Intelligence Agencies to decrypt conversations?
Anyway, all the best for Skype. I will continue to support it as long as it suits my needs!
Posted by: Jean Mercier at September 13, 2005 12:21 AM