[IMG]http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u139/gtroyal/garage_sale_332_220.jpg[/IMG] You know it is a tough week when even the founder of your company takes a swipe at you. And so too goes this week with Skype’s Niklas Zennstrom stating:
….that while the Internet telephone services provider was growing at a steady pace, “we overshot in terms of monetization” and admitted the company had not delivered the immediate revenue boost expected following eBay’s $2.6 billion acquisition in 2005.
Now I was in favour of linking Skype together with ebay to build a commerce driven telephony platform linking millions of micro and small businesses together to build an ecosystem. The ecosystem is there sans the telephony part on any large scale….
David Willis, an analyst at Gartner, said eBay will need to find more creative ways to monetize Skype’s technology if it’s ever going to recoup some of its investment, adding that eBay’s struggles with Skype are “not due to issues with vision but with that of execution.”
My suggestion earlier had been to focus on the larger ticket items where a higher degree of confidence is required to purchase. For example, real estate, vehicles and jewelry all spring to mind. I personally have purchased large ticket items successfully but it was not without some heartache on my part. However I would not purchase an item for amount greater than I would be prepared to lose if worst came to worst, which for me means a several thousand dollars. So how do we use Skype to build confidence within the ebay ecosystem. First thing is charge for the privilege of using these tools. There is nothing like upfront cost to drive off most opportunistic fraudsters. Build in 800 numbers, unified voicemail, IVR, anything that increases the presence and accessibility of the power seller, sort of like a small business in a box that not only reaches out over interweb, but aligns traditional business tools together. Ebay has proved that there is whole world of people who want to do business with each other , it is time to take it to the next step.
