Mark Evans writes:
Here’s my initial take on why eBay made the deal. Part of it has to be defensive. It has become increasingly obvious the Web will be dominated by a handful of large companies (eBay, Google, Amazon, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo and News Corp. if it keeps making acquisitions). The key consideration is traffic but in a different way from the dot-com days when attracting traffic was more about attracting VC or pumping up a stock price. Today, the strong growth of the advertising and e-commerce markets means traffic is big business. Skype brings more than 52 million registered users to eBay and 2 million paying customers. With this database, eBay can cross-sell its other services and, at the same time, generate new revenue from voice services as Skype moves into the mainstream.
I don’t think you can justify $2.6 billion for 52 million users, 2 million of whom are paying. That’s $1300 per customer, so obviously Skype and EBay see a convergence of strategy. Here are some potential areas they might see synergy:
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Skype as a presence engine is a potentially huge addition to the EBay model. What if you could ask questions of the seller in real time?
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Skype with micro-payments adds the potential of real time auctions via IM or voice.
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Skype as an advertising vehicle (a la MSN / Yahoo) gives EBay a whole new revenue stream.
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Skype-In/Skype-Out as an arbitrage play is completely aligned with the EBay model.
What do you think?
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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