BusinessWeek broke the story of Skype's founders launching a TV net distribution biz as a venture separate from Skype. Not known if it will be in the eBay family, but Zennstrom and Friis will remain 100% and 80% at Skype, respectively. It is code named "The Venice Project," not likely related to a 1999 time travel movie about the arts of that name (Lauren Bacall, Dennis Hopper, and a large cast split between modern Venice, California, and an earlier Venice, Italy.) Om Malik says "we told you so." So do we. Skype Journal wrote in January that Skype's ringtone relationships would lead to music, television, and movie distribution. Then with Warner Music, now with EMI Music Publishing.

This isn't good for eBay. The way they are organizing The Venice Project, as a separate venture, may conflict with eBay's strategy to use Skype as a platform to make markets for intangibles. We live in a service economy but eBay makes its living making markets for atoms. One SkypeBayPal vision extends their community and market-making excellence to paid live and time-shifted conversation. Not just video files and streams, but one-to-one education, consulting, information services, and entertainment. And eBay's budding alliance with Hollywood loving Yahoo! could easily fuel an eBay entertainment distribution channel with alliances and content. While the Venice Project could build on Skype and eBay, it doesn't look like there will be direct business or technical connections to the mother ship. eBay's loss.

Meg won the fight for Skype's soul: Skype will be an eBay enabler (as opposed to revolutionizing conversation, work, and entertainment as we know it). Skype's new management is building Skype's community and eBay's sales in 2006 and 2007. Given that direction, could The Venice Project be an outlet for the founders' broader vision? Or just a simple thrust at a gobsmackingly huge market? Either way, it's almost always faster to build your skunkworks outside the behemoth.

Rafat Ali says N & J should talk with Masayoshi Son about his plans in this space. Ars Technica's Anders Bylund points to the founders' bizdev power as key to partnering with TV studios and producers. Mathew Ingram thinks TV execs must be ready to dive in since they are living with industry disruption. Not to mention the worst ratings ever.

Two years's from now? Imagine TVP launches in January, gets 100 million people in 2007 who want to watch TV on their PCs and mobiles. Brings a little long-tail to the game, so you can always find something to watch and an audience for nearly anything. Restores social elements to watching television on your PC (think Skypecasts for sporting events). If effective, it could easily add one more nail into advertising-based TV's ratings, stealing attention from cable and satellite delivered television. Who loses? Other television distribution channels, like cable and satellite. What kind of content and viewer lock-in can TVP secure against the Comcasts who will surely copy TVP's business models?