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Skype Adds Movies to the Conversation With Jaman
Skype has partnered with Jaman, an internet movie service, to provide users with thousands of embeddable film scenes that can be added to their chats, profiles, and “mood messages”. The service is still in development, and Skype plans to have it available within the next couple of months.
Jaman’s licensed collection consists almost entirely of independent and foreign films, which will appeal to Skype’s international audience but may put off its American users. Skype has yet to finalize the available clip catalog, but at launch it expects most of the videos offered will be movie trailers as opposed to actual scenes. This limited library doesn’t sound particularly enticing - Skype will need to include more engaging content if they want this to catch on.
It seems that everyone just realized that people like to chat while they’re watching videos. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen new products from Lycos, Videophlow, and Userplane that plan to offer similar features. The trick will be to offer content that people actually want to talk about, which some of these companies don’t seem to have covered yet.
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Skype Offers Half Pregnant Java Mobile Phone Client
Skype is now available on many leading mobile phones, although depending on where you live you can’t use it to call people.
The java based mobile thin Skype client works on around 50 of the most popular Java-enabled mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The standard feature set includes chat, group chat, presence, receiving calls from Skype users, and through SkypeIn. The half pregnant part: Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls are initially only supported in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
It’s a big step forward for Skype; the company has a partnership with the 3 network and offers Skype enabled phones (and even a Skype phone) in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau, Sweden and the United Kingdom, but Skype on handsets outside of these markets has been the domain of third party go-between services until now. For eBay, getting Skype on more phones means increased use of the service, and hopefully enough profit to keep it from selling Skype at the end of the year.
Skype notes that this release is “expected to last several months, after which a public version of the application will be made available to millions of mobile phone owners around the world,” by which we’d hope is a fully fledged Skype client for everyone.
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Report: eBay Says It May Sell Skype
eBay has gone on the record saying that they will sell Skype if they fail to find ways of using Skype to support its core ecommerce business.
Richard Waters at the Financial Times got the scoop directly from eBay’s CEO John Donahoe:
“What we’re testing this year are the synergies,” Mr Donahoe told the Financial Times this week after Ebay reported its latest earnings. “If the synergies are strong, we’ll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we’ll reassess it.” That could lead to the disposal of the business, he indicated.
eBay purchased Skype 3 years ago and has failed to find ways of using Skype across its other products in this time, so it is unlikely that miracles will start happening for Skype in the next 8 months. A sale is likely late this year or in the first half of next year.
The news comes despite strong Q1 figures for Skype and others reports suggesting a Google buyout or alliance may be in the works.
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Skype Reports 61% YOY Growth; All Quiet On Google Front
eBay reported its first quarter results today with revenues of $2.19B, up $424M from the same quarter last year. Its GAAP net income was $460M, or $0.34 per diluted share.
Skype revenues were $126M with 61% year-over-year growth (although revenue is decelerating rapidly). During the first part of this year, Skype added 33M registered users, bringing its total to 309M users. This makes the Skype user base the largest within eBay’s collection of services.
The report signifies that Skype is hanging in there despite the setbacks of last fall that involved CEO Niklas Zennstrom stepping down and earning only 1/3 earnout.
We’ve heard nothing new regarding the possible Google partnership or acquisition with/of Skype, although a partnership looks more likely.
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Google/Skype Acquisition or Partnership Imminent?
Something big is brewing between Google and Ebay’s Skype, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Actually, for weeks now there have been low level rumors of the two companies talking, but nailing down any details was difficult. New information, however, suggests that they are in current talks and that a partnership or outright acquisition may be announced in the near future.
Skype, acquired in late 2005 for $3.1 billion, has been a financial albatross around Ebay’s neck. eBay removed Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom in October 2007, reportedly due to frustration at the financial performance of Skype. Ebay also negotiated down the huge earnout due to Skype stockholders and took a $936 million one-time loss around the transaction.
It’s clear that eBay wants to either unload Skype, or significantly drive performance.
Google, by contrast, is just beginning to think about how to dominate the voice space. They have a VOIP service through GTalk, a free 411 service and GrandCentral, a telephone management service they acquired last year for $50 million.
All of these products reside under VP Product Management Salar Kamangar and his new right hand guy, Bradley Horowitz. Other key players in the group are Wesley Chen, the product manager who championed the GrandCentral acquisition, and GrandCentral founders Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet.
That core team should be at the CTIA Wireless Conference in Las Vegas, but we’ve heard that they either aren’t there or at the very least aren’t showing up for scheduled meetings (if anyone at the event sees them, let me know). That doesn’t mean the team is busy working on a partnership or acquisition of Skype instead of attending the conference. But given that we’ve heard from sources close to the deal that something is happening between the companies, it’s not a stretch, either.
What does Skype bring to the table? Scalable technology and a proven platform in the VOIP, VOIP2POTS and P2P Video, to start - 100 billion VOIP minutes have been logged on Skype to date. At any given time there are 10 million simultaneous users on Skype. Skype is the glue that can pull all the nascent Google products together.
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Could Spitzer Scandal Take Skype Video Mainstream?
While Eliot Spitzer’s predilection for hookers (sorry, high priced call-girls) has made headlines worldwide, video over Skype may end up as a beneficiary.
Marked as a first for national TV, CNN used Skype Video to conduct a live interview Monday. According to Reuters, CNN interviewed Jeffrey Toobin, who went to Harvard Law School with Spitzer, via Skype from Maui.
The report says that Toobin used a laptop computer and webcam borrowed from the business centre of the hotel where he and his family were staying. The interview was featured in CNN’s prime-time political programming, and Toobin took part in a discussion on Anderson Cooper 360, all via Skype Video.
Skype has long been used for IM and voice calls, but its still relatively new video feature hasn’t taken off in a similar way. With CNN being able to use Skype Video to conduct interviews and live appearances, Skype may now get a boost as a strong video alternative to existing video conferencing tools and companies.
On a related note, the hooker behind the Spitzer scandal sells music on Amie Street. 89c buys the rather ironically named Unspoken Words album with the feature single What We Want.
Update: Amie Street has added a new song “Move ya body” to the playlist. If you want to hear a famous hooker sing get in quick, the album was 29c 12 hours ago, it’s now up to $1.16. Your slice of New York history 
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Skype: 100 Billion Free Phone Minutes And Counting
Since launching four and half years ago, Skype users have talked to each other for 100 billion minutes, and that is just counting free Skype-to-Skype phone calls. Of course, many of those calls would never have been made if Skype didn’t exists, so you cannot count the entire 100 billion minutes as a loss for the phone companies. But a significant chunk of that has got to be eating away at phone company profits.
Skype’s owner, eBay, is not necessarily the winner here either. While Skype has been a boon for consumers, it’s eBay that is footing the bill. Even at the reduced $3.1 billion acquisition price after the write-down, eBay still ended up paying roughly 3 cents a minute for all of those calls. I think I pay less with Verizon.
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Skype Launches Its Mobile Phone Overseas
Skype’s anticipated mobile phone is now official. Britain’s mobile carrier 3 will start selling it on November 2 in the UK, and later this year in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau and Sweden. 
This will be the first mobile phone with Skype built in, meaning that calls to other Skype members are free. The phone will cost about $100 with a pay-as-you-go plan (for the non-Skype calls), or free with a monthly contract.
This is an enlightened move on the part of 3. If people are going to start bypassing the mobile carriers with free Internet calls, the carriers might as well get in front of the trend and start cannibalizing themselves. At least this way, 3 captures the non-Skype calls and wins loyalty points among its Skype-using subscribers. Anything that reduces customer churn is worth a try in the eyes of the carriers.
[For more on this story see TechCrunch UK]
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What Was Skype’s Shortfall?
When Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom stepped down earlier this month with only one-third of his payout from eBay, it was clear that Skype fell short of its goals in regards to growing its number of active users, revenues, and gross profits. Obviously, Skype is not a good fit for eBay. But what exactly were those goals? After all, Skype’s revenues grew 96 percent in the third quarter and it is on track to bring in $400 million in revenues this year.
According to one former Skype executive, that $400 million is only half of what eBay was expecting for 2007 revenues when it originally bought Skype (or, rather, half of what Zennstrom needed to still be on track to get his full payout). This former Skyper cautions that this $800 million target is more of a best guess on his part than a confirmed number. So file this under “educated rumor.” Anyone who can confirm the real earn-out targets, please send me an e-mail.
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eBay’s Skype Conundrum
Now that eBay’s Skype write-down has caused it to take a $936 million loss last quarter and founder Niklas Zennstrom is out, the question is what will eBay do with Skype. According to one source, the remaining Skype/eBay management team is holing up in London this week to try to figure out how to actually make money from Skype. (While the business is on track to pull in just over $400 million in revenues this year, expectations were higher).
The problem with the $3.1 billion Skype acquisition from the start is that it never really made much sense for eBay. Unlike Paypal, which accounted for about 15 percent of payments on eBay when it was purchased five years ago, nobody uses Skype to close deals on eBay. In fact, one of the original justifications of the deal was that it would help “increase the velocity” of transactions on eBay by allowing buyers and sellers to actually speak to one another for bigger items where more communication might be necessary. But Skype has yet to be implemented on eBay itself (someone please correct me if I’m wrong). The reason for that is because if buyers and sellers could call each other, that would effectively allow them to go around the eBay marketplace. You and I could close a deal on an old camera or bicycle without paying eBay its cut.
Meg Whitman, who just left the stage at the Web 2.0 conference, admits: “We weren’t quite dead-on with the strategy that we thought was the strategy.” Yet she says she remains bullish on Skype’s potential, and defends the acquisition, reasoning that, “In this business the cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”
The best bet for Skype right now is to expand into other areas of voice communications like mobile, and make more deals to embed Skype into big Websites like MySpace. Just don’t expect to see a lot of integration into eBay itself.
(A bit off topic, Whitman also hinted on-stage that eBay is thinking about how to blow out Paypal into a full-fledged identity and reputation system that you can take with you all across the Web. The Web needs a reputation system and a way to authenticate people’s true identities. This is right in eBay’s sweet spot. People already trust PayPal.)
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If Only Users Were Gold: Skype Hits 10M Simultaneous Users Mark
Skype has some more encouraging news following yesterday’s announcement that it has teamed up with MySpace to provide that social network’s users with free Skype calls.
Early this morning, 10 million users were connected to the Skype global network at the same time. That’s a tenfold increase over their celebration on October 20, 2004 of having 1 million simultaneous users.
However, in light of the recent bad news concerning the state of Skype, you may want to hold the applause and remember that lots of users don’t always translate into lots of money.
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Skype Equips MySpace Users to Make Free Calls
Starting in November, MySpace’s 110 million active users will be able to make free calls using Skype-enabled version of MySpace’s instant messaging client, MySpaceIM.
This marks the first time that Skype has allowed its technology to be integrated into a 3rd-party application, thereby disassociating the Skype service from the Skype client.
Skype has provided a developer program through which others can build applications initiate functions of the Skype client, but the company never before allowed for seamless integration with its VoIP network.
MySpace users will be able to make calls using MySpaceIM without needing to download any additional Skype software or even to sign up for a Skype account. They will also be able to initiate calls through MySpaceIM by clicking a link that will be displayed under the portraits on MySpace profile pages. Revenue from premium Skype calls (e.g., to landlines) will be split between MySpace and Skype, although details of the split have not yet been disclosed.
In addition, the integration of MySpace and Skype will allow MySpace users to transfer information, such as portraits, from their profiles to their Skype accounts.
MySpace claims that MySpaceIM currently has over 25 million installed users. MySpaceIM with Skype will be launched in 20 countries.
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Skype: CEO Zennstrom Steps Down; Only 1/3 of Earnout Paid
Skype (acquired by eBay in late 2005) announced today that co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom will step down, retaining his role as chairman (which doesn’t mean much for a subsidiary of a public company). Andy Abramson says this is a sign that eBay isn’t happy with the way Skype has been run to date. He also speculates that it may be spun off at some point into a free standing public entity. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that happen.
More interesting is the news that the earnout in the transaction, which could have amounted to $1.7 billion, was settled for just 1/3 of that possible total, or $530 million. The earnout was to be based on specific active user, revenue and gross profit targets that were to be achieved in 2008 and the first half of 2009. It’s clear those objectives are not being met.
eBay is taking a financial statement write-off of around $1.5 billion in connection with the transaction. Analyst Henry Blodget calls the eBay - Skype merger a failure based on the performance of the deal to date. That may or may not be the case for eBay; but for Skype’s stockholders it was most definitely a big win.
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Skype Phishing Scam
Like most people, I thought I’d seen everything in terms of phishing scams. Paypal and bank phishing emails are a regular occurrence in most people’s inboxes. Then I received this:
Why in the world would a scammer want my Skype details? I have about $12 AUD in credit, which I suppose could be used to make calls, but it hardly seems worth the effort.
Notably, Gmail did not pick the email up as being a scam.
I checked the html for the email: the alleged skype link goes to a page on cec-icmc.org that is set up to look just like a page from Skype.
A quick search on Google results in other instances of Skype scams, but I didn’t find one exactly like this. In context, I don’t use Skype Out that often and Skype occasionally sends emails telling me that I have to use Skype Out to maintain the Skype Out credit, along with my Skype In number. This phishing scam keeps to the similar theme, in that Skype legitimately does on occasion request account updates.
A word of warning to the many, many Skype users out there: don’t trust emails claiming to be sent by Skype. If you’re already smart to this: good for you.
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Windows Users Caused Skype Outage
Skype has finally explained the reasons behind the 36+ hour outage of their popular P2P VOIP service last week: Windows Users.
According to Skype the outage was caused by “a massive restart of our user’s computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine software update” which The Register points out was Microsoft’s monthly patch Tuesday. Patch Tuesday is the time of the month Windows users receive security updates that often result in widespread reboots by Thursday.
Skype said that whilst their peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, the event “revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly.”
See our previous Skype coverage, including the Skype outage here.
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EBay Sees $1 Billion Knocked Off Market Cap; Skype Outages Continue
It was a bad day for stock in general, but eBay had a double whammy.
eBay shares closed down 2.58% (89c) Thursday despite a late rally by NASDAQ listed stocks. The decline knocked $1 billion + off eBay’s market cap and follows a day where the eBay owned VOIP provider Skype remained crippled by a system wide outage.
The Skype outage is now approaching 18 hours (at the time of writing) with little information coming from Skype other than that the issue is related to “sign-on problems.” Skype earlier in the day was forced to deny rumors that their platform had either been hacked or subject to a cyber attack.
Some users have reported intermittent Skype service, with the service connecting then dropping after several minutes.
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Skype Suffers Major Outage
Skype has suffered a major service outage that started from approximately 3am PST Thursday.
Skype advised that their engineering team had determined that the downtime was due to a software issue, with the problem expected to be solved “within 12 to 24 hours.”
The issue was serious enough to cause Skype to temporarily disable all downloads of the Skype client.
Skpe has had a very strong record of uptime previously and this outage is a first in recent memory. In comparison Twitter was down intermittently from 7pm PST Wednesday for around 6 hours, a fairy regular occurrence. Skype remained down at the time of writing as at 7:30am PST.
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Use TokBox To Set Up Instant Video Chat
TokBox is a new site that we just heard about moments ago. It’s completely live but appears to have been flying under the radar until now.
It allows you to set up a video chat channel in seconds. It instantly and accurately detected the camera and microphone on my Mac laptop after registration. At that point, I was prompted to invite someone to the chat via email, or send them to my user page on the site. They click on the link and can participate even without registration. The controls are simple - set volume, mute or kill camera. If the person is not there, you can leave a video message. That’s all there is to it.
If you enable browser popups you can pull the video chat out of the browser and go to other websites or applications without disrupting the conversation. The chat box can also be embedded on another website.
TokBox is also a basic social network - you can add friends who’ve registered to call them more easily. You can also tag yourself, suggesting that the site will try to find people with similar interests and put them together. That also suggests the site may be used for online dating, which is a big venture capitalist-pleaser.
While there are plenty of video chat products out there on the market, including Skype, most of them require at least some software download to the computer. Something about the simplicity of TokBox, which is entirely a web application, suggests it might get very popular very fast.
Update:
Ryan Merket whipped up a Facebook application that integrates the TokBox chat player.
Update2: Check out competitor YouCams as well.
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Skype For Mac 2.6 with Mac-Exclusive Feature
Skype for Mac 2.6 was released today and includes a number of “catch up” features previously available only for Windows Skype users. Among them are a chat type indicator (knowing when your contacts are writing messages), Skype Prime integration and automatic updates.
But the coolest feature is Mac-only at this point, Call Transfer. When you are on a Skype call, you can transfer it to another Skype user on your contact list. It is available under the “more” button during an ongoing call.
It appears that the receiving user must also be using Mac version 2.6, so this feature isn’t that useful yet. Still, its nice to see Skype releasing a new feature for the Mac crowd first.
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Skype Rolls Out Skype Prime: Charge For Calls
Skype rolled out Skype Prime this evening, a new service that lets people charge for Skype voice and video calls. Users set the fees they want to charge, on a per-minute or per-call basis. Skype charges the paying side via their Skype credit, and then pays the money out, minus a 30% fee, via paypal (Skype’s sister company).
Like Ether, which launched last year (and charges just 15% or the gross fees generated), this will be a very useful service for certain types of consultants. Unlike Ether, Skype Prime starts with a huge installed base of users, and works cross-border. You can also say that both companies stole the idea from the old 976 pay-per-call numbers.
To use the new service, both sides of the call must be using the newest version of Skype (3.1.0.134) for Windows. Other platforms are coming eventually, Skype says.
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