The Flat Planet and a Phone !

Phil Wolf updates us in his Skype Journal post that Ebay is finally offering Skype me buttons on Ebay auctions. You probably recall that this was the original reasoning for the outlandish price that Ebay paid for Skype…

Many think that this is too little and too late. Andy even calls it Stupidity and wonders why are they offering only Skypeme buttons, what about other click to call buttons? If the objective is to bring buyers and sellers together, additional call in services can only make it easier!

Makes me wonder what the real Skype strategy is. If they look at Skypeme as a sales tool for sellers, than Andy is right, any click to call service is great, but if they see their main revenue stream coming from the traditional telco termination costs, then they must keep the system closed.

Either way, they seem to have made a big mistake in buying Skype even after the write off. To get a click to call button they didn’t need to buy Skype, they could have called me up (or anyone else …) and we would have it up for them in a day or two. If they see themselves as a telco, then they still have a long way to go to justify such a high valuation. Lets not forget that the price of minutes are going down not up.

So what is their real strategy?