Mar 27 2010
In Openet Expansion I recently expressed the opinion that the economy was picking-up in Ireland. The trend seems to be continuing, because eBay, LinkedIn, and IBM all made job announcements during the week:
It is great news, although I think that this trend is mainly confined to the ICT industry.
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Oct 25 2009
I read an article during the week about a letter of support for Net Neutrality from some of the biggest, and most well-known, Internet based companies in the world. The article is Big names support net neutrality, and it lists the following supporters:
The letter, signed by the chief executives of Google, Ebay, Skype, Facebook, Amazon and Sony Electronics among others, says that maintaining data neutrality helps businesses to compete on the basis of content alone.
And…
Other signatories included community websites Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn and Craigslist.
This list of companies does not really surprise me, as they probably have the most to gain from Net Neutrality. Conversely, it is probably the telcos who have the most to loose!
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Apr 16 2009
Yet another Skype story this week…
The founders of Skype were unable to reach a deal with eBay regarding the sale of Skype. So instead eBay will try to float Skype. That should be interesting to watch, if it gets to that stage!
For more details about this story see eBay set to float Skype.
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Apr 14 2009
Another Skype story…
Rumour has it that the founders of Skype are considering buying Skype back from eBay. The full story can be read in Four years later, Skype’s founders looking to buy it back.
I actually think that this would be a great move for both companies. I do not really see any business or technological reasons why either company is of significant interest to the other. I actually think that they are in totally different market segments – Skype is in telecoms and eBay is in online auctioneering.
Furthermore, I know that many of the Tier 1 telcos see Skype as a significant competitor. I think that independence from eBay would allow Skype to become an even bigger competitor!
I think that the challenges for Skype are to grow its customer base, and to generate more revenue from its customer base. I think that the first challenge is being addressed by increasing penetration into both the mobile market and the business market. I am less clear how the second challenge can be addressed. In my experience, the Skype users that I know have all progressed from the free voice and video calls to buying SkypeOut credit. I wonder what percentage of Skype’s users have actually gone on to make a purchase from Skype.
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