Ebay's plans for Skype | The Register

Ebay's plans for Skype | The Register
Ebay has definite plans for what it is going to do with Skype, and Meg Whitman, eBay's president and CEO, is equally sure about what they are not going to do.

Whitman, on a conference call today, made it clear that the company is not interested in widening its appeal by becoming some kind of portal. She said eBay had succeeded by being focused and that was not changing.

But she does see future growth for Skype in three separate areas.

Firstly, and most obviously, this will be from integrating Skype onto eBay's auction site. Buyers and sellers send each other five million emails a day. Anything that can speed up and improve this communication should have big benefits for eBay. Additionally, most of the real action on auctions happens in the last few minutes so getting instant answers from sellers should keep more buyers interested and keep the bids going up. The only possible downside to this is that buyer and seller get on so well while chatting on Skype that they make a sale outwith eBay.

Secondly, eBay wants to cement Skype's premier position in the Voice over Internet Protocol market. Skype claims 54m registered users and hopes for 57m by the end of the third quarter. Because it is a virtual peer-to-peer network this growth costs Skype very little while simultaneously making the network more attractive - when one person signs up they are likely to bring friends and family with them to take advantage of free calls. With Google and others getting into the market and continued pressure from telcos it makes sense for Skype to find a friend with deep pockets.