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The VoIP community, like so many others, got swept up in the Facebook platform euphoria. Not a day passed without some startup or another unveiling their Facebook application amid much fanfare. Well, the party is over, and it has become clear that VoIP apps have lost their voice on Facebook.

This was first noted by one of my readers on his blog; now Stuart Henshall, Alec Saunders and other VoIP bloggers have joined in pointing out the sorry state of VoIP on Facebook.

“The majority of Facebook users are students — mobile phone users — as well. In fact, 27% of Facebook users are users of Facebook mobile,” writes Saunders.

Given how easy mobile is, he wonders, who is going to take the trouble to fire up a PC and log onto Facebook just to make a call? Let’s extend this argument to all VoIP widget offerings — they don’t offer a vastly improved user experience when compared with the simplicity of the phone. Sure they save pennies per minute on international long distance calls, but even those costs are coming down quite sharply.

Actually the situation for VoIP apps on Facebook is pretty bleak.

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Tom Keating reports that the owners of Skype Wi-Fi phones and other standalone devices have been experiencing excruciating network problems, and points to the vitriol flowing freely on the Skype forums.

This raises the question: Why are these outages happening? And should Skype (EBAY) start to build its own network of super peers? After all, their big plan is to drive Skype’s non-PC usage, as indicated by their recent expansion into the mobile market. They have also been aggressively pushing the Skype brand, making money by licensing it to hardware makers who build devices like Wi-Fi phones and then sell them at mass-market retailers such as Wal-Mart.

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Jajah, the VoIP callback service provider that shifted from paid to “free” and was dreaming of an initial public offering in 2007, has pushed back its IPO plans until the second or third quarter of 2008, co-founder Roman Scharf told Reuters. The timing seems about right — the way everyone is going nuts here in the Valley, profitless IPOs could make a solid return by the middle of next year. (Too bad eBay already made its play with Skype.) Scharf said that it would take between $100 million and $200 million to attract 50 to 80 million Jajah users. “When something crashes in the Valley, it crashes really hard,” he said. Yeah, like the dreams of an IPO. Jajah has received funding from Sequoia Capital, Intel Capital and Globespan Partners.

Covad to be acquired by Providence Equity Platinum Equity Partners for $1.02 a share in cash, a 59 percent premium to its closing price on Friday. Covad is one of the handful of independent broadband service providers to have survived the telecom bust. Providence, I suspect, will have Covad focusing on wholesale and wireless broadband. Maybe it is time for the private equity guys to take a cold, hard look at EarthLink (ENLK).

Vonage and Verizon kiss and make up. The patent fracas is going to end with a settlement that will see Vonage (VG) paying out either $80 million or $120 million. Vonage has seen seeking a rehearing of its case, and if it wins, Verizon (VZ) gets $80 million. No one can tell me that this patent mess isn’t about the money. The ironic thing is that the shareholders who bought into Vonage’s independence have seen their dollars end up in the pockets of the incumbents.

Skype launches 3SkypePhone. It was rumored for a while, but Skype (EBAY) and 3 have launched a Skype-branded phone that lets 3 customers make free Skype-to-Skype calls and send free Skype instant messages from their mobile phone to other Skypers by pushing a single Skype button on the phone.

Akamai shows how HD is done. Is the Net ready for HD video? Akamai (AKAM) says yes, and puts up a site for show-and-tell.

Hypres combines superconductivity with software radios. Hypres, a superconductor maker that we recently profiled, has signed a deal with SELEX Communications, a division of Finmeccanica Company (a huge defense and high-tech company in Italy), to develop an all-digital receiver for the SELEX Communications software-defined radio.

How good is Apple Airport Extreme (AAPL)? Information Week thinks it is better than the rest. It’d better be, given how expensive the damn thing is.

Now that eBay (EBAY) has admitted that it overpaid for Skype, it is time for the company to start trying to recover some of its investment. The best way for them to do that is by milking the Skype brand — like with the so-called Skype Phone.

It appears that UK mobile operator 3 is ready to launch an iSkoot-powered, Skype-branded phone on Oct. 29 in London, and is sending out press invites. 3 is being coy, but some folks can see right through them. 3 has been offering iSkoot-based Skype on some of its phones for a while now, though it isn’t clear how that experiment is going. It would be interesting to see what it looks like, and the idea of a device that has all of Skype’s functions built into a mobile phone isn’t all that bad.

Now where else do you think the Skype brand can be applied?

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.

eBay (EBAY) is finally jumping with both feet into social networking with its eBay Neighborhoods. It’s clearly arriving at the party at a late hour, but what it’s brought to that party has enough panache that it deserves a good look.

eBay will formally lift the veil on its eBay Neighborhoods a little later today, but the site was live Tuesday evening and reports and reviews were already appearing. eBay described it as

“a collection of micro-communities built around common interests and passions …, eBay Neighborhoods draws content from existing community features such as eBay listings, eBay Blogs, eBay Guides, and eBay Reviews, while adding new Neighborhood-specific message boards, member-uploaded photos, and social mapping tools to visualize the interconnections between people and their common interests.”

Which raises a question: If blogs, guides and reviews weren’t enough to entice new buyers in droves to its site, why does eBay think that glomming them together with some new features will make much difference? eBay’s answer seems to be that, unlike many social networks, eBay offers people a reason to connect.

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Niklas Zennstrom has resigned as CEO of Skype, but will become non-executive chairman of the company’s board. Michael van Swaaij, eBay’s (EBAY) chief strategy officer, has been appointed interim CEO until a replacement is found.

eBay also announced that it has paid EUR 375 million (approximately $530 million) to settle all of its future obligations under the earn-out agreement signed with certain Skype shareholders when eBay acquired Skype in 2005.

Clearly, Skype’s master plan wasn’t working, and revenue targets that were supposed to determine the earnouts weren’t met. So instead of a billion-dollar-plus earnout, Zennstrom and co-founder Janus Friis will have to settle for $530 million. Boo-hoo.

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