eBay's Skype Plan: Make Money From Free Calls
from the jedi-mind-trick dept
eBay CEO Meg Whitman defended the company's purchase of Skype to analysts yesterday -- or tried to, anyway. She first said that voice calls will eventually be free, which really isn't anything new, but will make it a little difficult to make back that $4 billion. The plan, then, is to make money from the "ecosystem" around it. BusinessWeek says there's a five-fold strategy: "integrate" Skype with all of eBay's various brands and properties, give every Skype user a PayPal account, charge businesses for ads users can click to make inbound Skype calls, use Skype to make inroads into China and Japan, and finally, sell add-on Skype services. It's really hard to see how any combination of those is worth $4 billion. It's totally unclear how "integrating" Skype into eBay will generate any revenues, and it's also not clear why businesses would pay for special Skype-able ads when users could just Skype them for free. And it's great that eBay hopes to use Skype to expand in China, but some Skype services have already been blocked there, so it's not the most stable environment. Whitman's plan doesn't evoke much confidence that eBay has a viable plan to make money from Skype, and it's really hard to understand why they couldn't have offered most of these services through a partnership rather than an overpriced acquisition.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Trying to buy customers
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Wait 2 - 5 years
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No Subject Given
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eBay's Skype Plan: Make Money From Free Calls
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Why aren't EBay shareholders furious, where's the
When a business transaction doesn't pass the "sniff" test, you have to wonder why the shareholders aren't raising holy hell, and similarly, why the SEC isn't involved to make sure there isn't something more sinister going on.
I honestly don't understand why any investor would have confidence in the American financial markets these days.
Vaguely accurate valuations of companies? Nope.
All investors on a reasonably even field information wise? Nope.
Transparency for external investigation of misconduct? Nope; trust the SEC!
Etc.
Don't expect to see much press on how corrupt the markets are. Those same reporters have investments to protect.
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Re: Why aren't EBay shareholders furious, where's
And if valuations are "correct" in your opinon, that isn't a sign of some vast conspiracy. It's probably a sign that you're wrong.
I, for one, think this was a stupid decision. But I don't own Ebay. So I really don't care what they do. If their shareholders get burned, so what? There is not such thing as a guaranteed investment.
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claim
thanks for your attention
i hope i can get the money
to fullfill my need
sincerely
Bayu Santosa
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Ebay is great
Ebay is an excellente way to make money online. Success !!
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