eBay Finally Realizes That No One Is Interested In Voice Communication With Others During An Online Auction
from the about-time dept
When eBay first bought Skype we were among the many, many, many people left scratching their heads wondering where the supposed "synergies" were. We were told two things. First, that Skype had many users in China who would now suddenly start using eBay for auctions. Why? No one knows. In reality it had almost no effect. Just because you make calls via a software program it doesn't make you any more interested in doing online auctions through its parent company, apparently. Second, it would now allow buyers and sellers to communicate by voice. But why would they want to? Sure, maybe in a very rare case it might be helpful, but one of the advantages of an online auction system like eBay is that you don't need to actually talk to the other party. And if it was that important to talk, the buyer and seller could just agree to use Skype on their own without eBay spending billions. And, in fact, studies showed that this "feature" wasn't wanted by most eBay users.But, still, in an effort to show that there really (no, really, really!) were some synergies, eBay integrated Skype into online auctions. Of course, now that eBay has finally admitted that there really were no synergies, taken a huge writedown on the investment and is looking to spin off Skype, the company is finally removing the integrated Skype buttons on auctions, and are even admitting that the company is involved "in an effort to remove features with limited buyer and seller usage." Was it really that hard to recognize how little synergies there were before spending multiple billions of dollars?
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Filed Under: auction, synergies, voice
Companies: ebay, skype
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I'd guess that most eBay sellers despised it.
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Large numbers of us are imploring the gods for a competitor to Ebay.
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The problem with Skype is monetizing it. But that's not my problem.
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What do you mean he doesn't see the bill directly? I'm pretty sure Verizon, or ATT, or Cox, or whichever ISP he uses sends him a bill every single month.
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One of the consultants we use, parent has mandated all of them use skype when communicating with anyone at the home office. They can only use cell phones when their not connected to their VPN.
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The guys now running Skype probably don't read Techdirt. Don't they know that they should give away the infinite goods and charge for scarcities?
Perhaps they should try selling T-shirts.
Youtube faces a similar problem. Everyone loves it, no one cares how Google monetizes it.
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Skype on its own is very useful to people.
And Skype may have monetization problems, but not as big as many other companies (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc). Skype upsells premium services, SkypeOut, Voicemail, etc. They DO make revenues and those revenues are growing. It is a very successful business...so long as you didn't spend $4 Billion to buy it. That kinda makes it hard to be profitable.
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Skype In Trouble
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eBay decisions and Skype
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