Skype in Tallinn is probably out drinking with Henry Gomez right now. He is excited about his role as Skype's leader of North America.

His goal for next year? Make Skype a household name in North America, but especially in the United States.

What can one man do?

From Get Skype to Join Skype. Hank retells the story of the great eBay outage of 1999. The founders gave 500 customer names to each eBay employee. They shut down operations for a week to call every customer, to apologize, and to listen. eBay can not only share that level of customer commitment with the Skype family, they can bring their formal methods - like training, the Pink teams, their forum moderation - to NorthAm. The broad mass of Skype users haven't flocked around shared interests and news formed, so there is much for Skype to do.

Buy Skype Here. Retailing is not just a holiday strategy. It connects brand awareness with the opportunity to act, in familiar surroundings. Watch as Skype continues rolling out retail distribution of Skype samplers (the branded impulse buy) and Skype certfied product (license revenue). What started in the U.S. with RadioShack and Brightpoint can, with a short track record, expand to the electronics superchains, WiFi hotspot operators and other touchpoints where people buy computers, telephony, and accessories. For millions, their first Skype experience will be a gift pack or a merchandise display.

Skype inside. NorthAm BizDev will have a role in bundling Skype offers and products with other goods and services. I can't wait for the Skype2 video to become a compelling product (not even close at the moment) so all the consumer products companies that make you look and sound good can jump in. Henry is not responsible for engineering, but he will be driving many of these kinds of alliances.

eBayers, this is Skype. Watch too for the NorthAm-centric PayPal and eBay to gradually expose their customers to the Skype identity network (Skype names, authentication, credits) and Skype presence (SkypeMe buttons). Skype names, especially one-off names, carry less personal risk and exposure than giving out your email address and phone number. As the eBay community brings itself into the Skype cloud, each will have a chance to bring their own personal and workplace social networks into Skype. With maybe 400k active NorthAm ebayers, this should be good for at least 2-4 million more local registrations.

Marcom Classic. And then there is traditional marketing communcations. Some are inexpensive, like sophisticated media relations; Skype is still a new name and VoIP a new idea to most tech columnists in the U.S.. Skype has yet to register for product placements in Hollywood, television and game productions. Is it too early for television commercials? How about online advertising? Can Skype afford the heavy ad budgets of AOL, Earthlink, Yahoo!, Microsoft, or eBay?

Of course Mr. Gomez won't do this on his own. He is staffing a new organization to execute on this charter. And you can be sure they won't fit in his cube.

Henry Gomez, formerly eBay SVP of Corporate Communications and Governement Relations reporting to Meg Whitman, is taking on the new role of General Manager North America. Henry will provide a focus for enhancing Skype's performance and growth in North America, which has lagged other parts of the world. While a small US team worked hard, it failed to secure the presence at retail and online that Skype needs to be successful. I'm looking forward to learning more about Henry's plans. North America is even more important now that eBay owns Skype.

Skype is in full corporate change mode. eBay is quickly adding mature new players. This should really help Skype get to the next level. Skype went from 25 to 200 employees so fast it never really installed that second layer of management. The eBay purchase has thrown that for another loop. As Andy says, a few have left and indeed new people are coming in. (see also Om). Still the hires so far...

1. Provide some financial control and targeting.
   
2. Put new emphasis on North America and New Ventures.
   
3. Are already impacting on engineering.

The question that continues to intrigue me is "product strategy." It feels very messy right now and I know there aren't month and months to waste on the laurels of last year's product. We will know before the end of Decemeber whether the emerging team can make decisions fast or whether Skype has simply lost the capability to continue reframing the VoIP space. Video and a few product enhancements alone won't be enough. The device market is waiting, and the pay-per-click market potential poorly understood.

The full contents of the press press release...

Skype Selects Executive to Lead Newly Formed North American Division

San Jose, CA and London, November 28, 2005 – Skype, the global Internet communications company, today announced that Henry Gomez has been named general manager of Skype North America. The newly-formed division has been established to better serve Skype users in the region. Reporting to Skype CEO Niklas Zennström, Gomez will be responsible for all areas of the company’s strategy and business in North America, including marketing, public relations, business development, product integration, and government relations.

“Skype is tremendously successful around the world, and we now plan to bring greater focus to North America,” said Zennström. “Henry’s deep knowledge of the market and its consumers, as well as his expertise in building brands like eBay, makes him uniquely suited to lead our North American business.”

Before joining Skype, Gomez had been senior vice president of corporate communications and government relations at eBay Inc., Skype’s parent company, reporting to eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Gomez joined eBay in 2000 and had global responsibilities for public relations, community development, internal communications and government relations. He is chairman of the eBay Foundation, eBay’s charitable giving organization.

Gomez is the third senior eBay executive to join the Skype team. Alex Kazim, formerly senior vice president of new ventures at eBay, has joined Skype to take charge of several new business areas. And Rajiv Dutta, eBay’s chief financial officer, will transition to the new role of president of Skype worldwide after his successor is named.

“The opportunity to share talent was a big reason why Niklas and I agreed to the acquisition,” said Meg Whitman, eBay President and CEO. “It’s going to be exciting to watch Alex, Henry and Rajiv work together with Skype’s already strong team. The powerful combination of talent should bring Skype even more success.”

About Skype

Skype allows people everywhere to make free, superior quality voice calls via its award winning peer-to-peer software. Skype is available in 27 languages and is the fastest growing voice communications offering in the world. Skype has been downloaded more than 200 million times in 225 countries and territories. Sixty-six million people are registered to use Skype's free services, with over 175,000 new registered users each day, and more than 4 million people using Skype simultaneously at any one time. Skype earns revenue through its premium service offerings, and has a growing network of global affiliates and a community of developers working with the Skype APIs. Skype Technologies SA is headquartered in Luxembourg, and has offices in London and Estonia as well as 15 other countries. Skype is an eBay company (Nasdaq: EBAY). To learn more visit www.skype.com.

Skype is not a telephony replacement service and cannot be used for emergency calling.

About eBay Inc.

Founded in 1995, eBay pioneers communities built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity. eBay enables ecommerce on a local, national and international basis with an array of websites—including the eBay Marketplace, PayPal, Kijiji, Rent.com and Shopping.com—that bring together millions of buyers and sellers every day.