Speaking of eBay UK at least, sellers have been able to add a button saying “chat” (text) or call (voice) for a while now.

See here:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/account/skype-ov.html

To me it seems like a natural progression to have this feature available, although most sellers (myself included) don’t use it because it is far more time-consuming than using email.

I think that Skype’s network should be independent of eBay (or about 99% so)… Most people don’t know that eBay and Skype are one - most people don’t care.

I personally love Skype and use it more than any other client (sans GChat maybe). It’s just a really clean and simple client for OS X and does everything so well. Kudos to the Skype UI team.

It’s not the perfect solution for everybody, but when you consider there are some places in SAN JOSE !!! where high speed internet is still not available it looks pretty good.

Jon

Come on, it wasn’t even close to be considered as a mistake!

Paypal’s “we’ll send you 2 transactions for under a dollar” is a GREAT way to verify someone’s identity. It’s enough of a pain that you typically can’t do it instantly, and don’t want to do it multiple times. They confirmed that they can track me down if they want to.

Imagine if every blog, chat board and voting site could make sure they knew who their clients were, and insure that people only vote once, don’t scam or spam the system, etc.

Perfect, no. Waaaaaaaaay better than anything else? yes. I’m just wondering why it’s taken 5 years for eBay to get it!

http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

Exactly WHAT does she think “Skype” would do for a cell phone? Data usage costs even more than voice! And public WiFi is spotty and unreliable.

Cell: [$] [:-)]
You pay AT&T, but you call anybody, anywhere, anytime. And anybody calls you anytime, anywhere.

Cell data: [$$$$] [;-|]
You pay AT&T and Skype, but at least you’re still in touch.

Public WiFi: [$$] [;-0]
You’re mostly OUT OF TOUCH, you pay Skype, AND you pay your bandwidth provider (indirectly, or directly if it’s private WiFi). When you’re willing to suffer the aggravation, that is.

So Meg must be smoking marijuana or something. Sure, everybody’s sick of dropped calls, and some people are SO sick of dropped calls they’d drop their service and buy Skype-capable cell phone just to punish the cell-Cos for their willful negligence in providing people with reliable service. And I guess there are others upset because they’re poor, but don’t have the discipline to stay under 1200 minutes /mo.

Everybody else is just better off sticking with their cell phone that works pretty much anywhere.

LOL, I read that as:

“Yet she says she remains bullshit on Skype’s potential”

1. It is a conduit to China and emerging markets - many of the 250M users are Chinese, or live in emerging markets (the uptake in the US is very little, about 20-30 million, a reason that eBay paid such a premium because there was little overlap of membership). How to convert the conduit to actual dollars is beyond me - but I don’t make the big bucks

2. Wi-Fi calling - it is no surprise that within 5-10 years, the internet will be available everywhere via WiMax or other similar technology, and the cell phone will just be another Wi-Fi device. The company that can place their software on mobile phones will be able to actually charge for call minutes made on broadband “unlimited” minute plans - skype is best poised for this IF they can get their client on as many phones as possible.

3. Business PBX replacement. It is no surprise that skype probably will make most of its dime from businesses that use the platform rather than purchasing expensive PBX call systems. These companies will be calling out to non-skype users (Skype OUT) and getting calls from people outside skype (Skype In) - both of these are revenue generating actions, and it is critical to the future of skype that it get itself embedded into as many SMB as possible - the value proposition is there, they just need a good sales team and business relevent hardware and support.