The exodus of senior management from eBay’s Skype division continues. Ten days after co-founder Niklas Zennstrom decided to say sayonara to the P2P telephony company, Michael Jackson, one of its early employees and VP of operations, has left the building. I had wondered why eBay (EBAY) didn’t bump him up to the top spot.
He was said to be chatting with a mobile payments company, but that information turned out to be not true. (My bad!) Instead, he is joining one of Skype’s earliest backers, Mangrove Partners. He’ll take the title of general partner, and is likely to go back to his first love: telecom and mobile. So Euro startups with mobile thrillers, it’s time to call MJ.
This is hilarious! Great comedic effect Om!
Om, it might be time for Ebay to put a Ebay person to head Skype. That kind of person might put Ebay / Skype integration as a priority.
Seems like that is only way to still make the merger succeed. Though as I wrote http://flatplanetphone.com/wordpress/?p=334
The deal was handicapped from Day 1, Ebay doesn’t want sellers and buyers to communicate too much, so they don’t circumvent Ebay :-)
I’m not sure why eBay integration with Skype is necessary, or even desirable.
But go ahead, put an eBay person in charge of Skype… that’ll be the final nail in the billion-dollar coffin.
Another web 2 taste the dust – Skype – was one of the winner but sad end seems to be bad news for industry:(
Moshe,
that is an excellent point. i guess that is precisely what they are doing right now. putting ebay people in charge.
I think this is a good question you bring up Ian. lets see what happens.
It appears that the only original members of Skype now reside in Estonia. The entire original management in London has left the building.
The people who were running Skype beyond Niklas were EBAY people. Look for fresh blood from outside.