Skype in the hot seat as eBay considers sale
By Leslie Poston
It seems I am not the only person who dislikes the way Skype interfaces (or rather, doesn’t interface) with other applications and services. eBay has recently declared they would be evaluating the various ways Skype interacts with their ecommerce business. Their CEO John Donahoe mentioned that if Skype wasn’t toeing the line it would be sold off.
I have long had a problem with Skype’s lack of interface with other applications, like chat clients and IM clients such as Adium. By requiring a stand alone application for any and all uses, Skype becomes very difficult to integrate into every day use. In fact, many find themselves not using it at all in the face of so many Web 2.0 based multi platform options.
The current evaluation is not a comprehensive review of the Skype platform, but rather of how it works with eBay and the commercial aspect of the property. Skype is a profitable company, for whatever reason, and yet Skype is not necessarily making it the money for eBay it needs to in order to stay off the chopping block.
eBay bought Skype for $2.5 million back in 2005. Since then, there have not been many inroads made for using Skype within the eBay auction format. This is in keeping with the current Skype business model, which seems to be to make it as inconvenient to use as possible by requiring the user have Skype installed and use it exclusively, as opposed to simply adding to the Adium client for monitoring.
Skype is not currently a huge draw for eBay. In light of recent conflicts over the eBay fee structure shake up, I can’t see any company like Skype making it under the eBay umbrella. If eBay keeps to current practices, Skype should be toast before the year is done, because eBay is all about the bottom line.
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