Skype-PayPal Integration
That is the sapling fertilized by $2.6 billion and change. Has anyone seen this before? More details here, but hard for me to translate. Gizmodo has more information as well. (Hat Tip, Zatz’s Cool!)
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May 9th: Skype Journal had the same photo
http://www.skypejournal.com/blog/archives/2006/05/skypeebaydirections_discussed.php
I’ve been predicting this and similar pay by phone schemes since December 2003…
a lot of folks have overlooked the potential for PayPal-Skype integration as the real upside behind the eBay-Skype deal. the existing userbase for Skype is an interesting demographic — tens of millions of international users, many of whom have cross-border interests (read: family / immigrant remittances, ebay sales, etc).
whether or not the price tag was justified, look for eBay to promote growth coming out of further Skype-PayPal opportunities… especially since growth has been slowing down in many of the eBay marketplace geographies.
Skype together with PayPal as a combined communications payment API platform has a lot of promise. only time will tell if eBay exec mgmt team allows their younger acquisitions enough freedom to deliver on this potential… or conversely, whether they get bogged down with succession politics & other corporate bureaucracy.
history as a guide, i’d say it’s an even bet.
(but i’m still rooting for my old peeps to pull it out ;)
[full disclosure: i used to work for PayPal]
http://500hats.typepad.com/
Hey Dave! :)
I have to say, if Paypal/Skype was the rationale for the acquisition, wouldn’t they have stated that at the time the deal was done?
Skype on eBay was supposed to be the money shot of the Skype acquisition. But the thing that every single analyst neglected to mention was that eBay has historically gone ballistic whenever buyers and sellers try to communicate before the transaction is completed, to avoid fraud and disintermediation — it’s going to be a very difficult balancing act to get $2.6B out of an activity that eBay has historically not been very warm to on its site.
(I should post my own disclaimer here that I used to work for eBay…)
Tracked this here
http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/39100.html
Re. your “but hard for me to translate” comment:
It does not say much more just that it was a beta version 2.5 still and only in the final version eBay purchases/sales will be possible from the Skype client with the shown Send Money/Request money buttons.
http://www.nice-ventures.com/blog/archives/305-Skype-Paypal-Integration.html
Ralf
See the comments section on this SeekingAlpha post. Meg Whitman has been out talking about this. http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/11243
Money slowly shows it’s original form to the wide public: it’s just pure information like everything else, nothing more and nothing less.
I agree with Dave McClure, but put it as much more than an even bet. eBay Inc. will certainly allow Skype to thrive and my bet is that this is just the beginning of what we’ll see ;)
C’mon Jeffrey, you know that not everything is in a press release! Where’s the competitive advantage of revealing all your cards? :)
Finally, let’s just look at eBay’s (very short) track record of enormous acquisitions — PayPal. When the deal was done there was lots of talk about the price. In hindsight, it was a phenomenal deal. But that’s because eBay and PayPal did great integration at various levels.
The eBay execs are not stupid. My guess is that the same will happen here.
[Full disclosure: I used to work at eBay]
i agree the ebay execs aren’t dumb shri, but sometimes it’s hard to swallow your corporate hubris and let new products & solutions grow that [might] cannibalize existing cash cows & proven markets… especially for public companies with an eye on quarterly numbers.
it’s true eBay (& PayPal) did a good job making the PayPal deal work out very well for their shareholders. however, they’ll only be able to keep pulling billion-dollar rabbits out of their hat to the extent they can keep smart folks like you around :)
In my opinion, Ebay made a very good acquisition. Now it depends on ebay management’s ability to make use of the software and talent that came with skype to develop next generation E-commerce services.