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Like an aging matron sporting Juicy tracksuits, eBay’s announcement today that it’s partially opening up its developer’s platform by allowing programmers to build their applications directly inside the site is unlikely to change the fact that the auction site is no longer the hot new thing.

The move is reminiscent of ones made earlier this year by social network MySpace as it tries to keep rival Facebook at bay. However, eBay’s efforts are a bit more limited and even less likely to change things for its developers, or its perception with buyers and sellers.

For starters, eBay is only opening up its Selling Manager program, which has 700,000 members. Across its 39 markets, eBay has about 84 million active users. Max Mancini, senior director of platform and disruptive innovation at eBay, said the move to open up the site to developers is in the early stage, but he wouldn’t say how far it would go, nor how revenue might be shared between the company and third-party developers selling their software on the site.

However, he was clear about the fact that eBay is taking these steps to increase the utility of the site for sellers. In addition to having their applications hosted directly on the eBay site, developers who participate in the program will also get access to proprietary APIs that can help them build apps to make life easier for eBay’s power sellers. An example Mancini gave included a way for a seller to determine how much a person usually buys so a seller knows how to prioritize requests for information from that person.

EBay has allowed third-party developers to use its web services platform since 2000. In 2005 it stopped charging developers for access to certain APIs in an attempt to broaden its reach. And last year it released a slew of APIs into the world in the hopes of bringing in ever more traffic from widget and mobile users. In the first quarter of this year, 20 28 percent of eBay’s listings came from third-party tools.

Power sellers tell me that bringing more tools inside the eBay ecosystem isn’t as important to them as making it easier for buyers to find items or other buyer-oriented programs that lead to more people browsing the site. Developers are already making money offering software for power sellers outside of eBay, so bringing those programs onto the site is of questionable value unless eBay is handing over some really good APIs. As a first step in a platform strategy, this isn’t earthshaking, but at least eBay’s not spending billions on a P2P voice startup.

Mobile browsing has clearly moved beyond 9-to-5 users and made inroads among the happy hour set. A recent survey by Opera showed about 40 percent (and about 60 percent in the United States, South Africa and Indonesia) of Opera Mini users visit social networking sites when surfing on a mobile. For those unfamiliar with the Opera Mini browser, it allows a user to see an entire web page and zoom in on desired content as long as they have Java on the phone.

The survey also shows which top 10 sites surfers visited in each country. The U.S. list begins with MySpace and ends with eBay. In between socializing and shopping is more socializing through Hi5 and Facebook, as well as search via Google, Microsoft Live and Yahoo. It looks like even if we aren’t using our phones for talking, we’re still using them to connect — and to settle bar bets. Wikipedia is the No. 8 slot in the United States. As the chart below shows, if users have an easy way to access the web on their mobiles they will. Carriers and device makers take note!

Amount of Data Consumed in MB by Opera Mini Users

Skype has released Skype 3.8 for Windows, and it has better audio, thanks to some improvements in the audio engine. Hopefully it will translate into better call quality and fewer dropouts. The best and most useful feature of this new release: If you change your headset, headphones or microphone, there’s no need to mess around with the sound settings — Skype adjusts everything automatically. Skype folks tell us that they have made a “number of video-related bug fixes” and added their own “UPnP implementation.”

Written by Jim Courtney, an associate editor of Skype Journal.

Having been trained as an engineer, scientist and business person, I’m always amazed at how the U.S., the self-assumed leader of free enterprise and democracy, seems intent on stifling their own economy and innovation ecosystem through ongoing government support of special interests whose business models are challenged by technological innovation and breakthroughs.

This week brought just the latest example. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told an audience at the CTIA Wireless Convention in Las Vegas that he was dismissing a petition from Skype that would force operators to connect any lawful device to the telephone network provided it doesn’t do harm to the network. This in a world in which Japan, Korea and Europe are providing the infrastructure that has allowed open competition, that separates the pipes from the content — Stockholm is a prime example — and that clearly provides much lower cost and higher participation communications activity for both the consumer and the enterprise.

This decision demonstrates nothing less than a failure on the part of a U.S. government agency to comprehend the technology infrastructure available to enhance business processes, build effective hardware platforms and take advantage of today’s more cost-effective rapid software development tools. And it portends for a less competitive U.S.

As for the impact on Skype’s presence on mobile platforms, it’s negligible at best. There are significant wireless data infrastructure issues that need to be addressed before there can be true VoIP over wireless with a business model that’s acceptable to carriers. Several vendors, such as iSkoot, IM+ for Skype, Fring and Mobivox, have found ways to access Skype via any carrier; they may not always have the full feature set but often having voice and chat is sufficient.

iSkoot has started to develop some carrier partnerships as they have found a way to bring both market advantages and cost savings to carriers using lessons from a SS7-type algorithm. By building on this algorithm, they also provide a means to access Skype for those smartphone owners who are on carriers with whom iSkoot does not have a direct relationship. IM+ for Skype allows you to set up calls not only for your own mobile phone but also to have them sent to other phones, such as one at the office. Mobivox simply provides access to Skype contacts from any phone handset with the help of VoxGirl and her speech recognition capabilities.

Over 80 percent of Skype users are outside the U.S. When a broader U.S. public starts to realize that the communications offerings found in Europe and the Far East are far superior to what they’re being offered, a movement will arise demanding change. It just may take a few years.

By then, with the adoption and implementation of Wi-Fi in homes and offices and the spread of dual mode GSM/Wi-Fi phones, such as any WiFi-enabled Blackberry 8×20, there will be many ways to circumvent the carrier networks. Users will start to ask about applications that they can run over Wi-Fi networks, not carrier networks. Once there is broad user demand for more openness, the politicians will respond.

The Martin recommendation, however, will limit hardware innovation over the long term. It will limit innovation in services and applications and it will put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage for both business and consumers. But will it also drive the carriers to invest in the infrastructure required to support and match the offerings, both services and applications, available in Europe and the Far East? Will it really encourage the carriers to really open up their systems through appropriate APIs and rewarding business relationships? Should the U.S. (and Canada) be striving harder to have an infrastructure based on the Stockholm model, whereby users have fiber to the end point — effectively built as a regulated utility providing the “pipe” — pay under $20 per month for unlimited very high-speed data (100 Mbps) and have their choice of service providers?

In the meantime, the best response for current users is to go into guerilla warfare mode:

• use iSkoot or IM+ for Skype to access your Skype and SkypeOut contacts from mobile devices such as Blackberry, Nokia and other smartphones
• encourage the implementation and use of readily authenticated Wi-Fi access points at your home, office and other frequently visited locations.
• use applications such as SlingPlayer for Mobile and Qik.com on devices where it is supported and cost effective for the end user.
• show the carriers they are losing significant business.

If a broader base of users than simply “in-the-know” technical geeks start to experience these applications and services, awareness of the issues raised by the Skype petition will be spread virally, and we all know that’s the most effective marketing available. Change can be driven, if enough are aware of the issues and are ready to speak their voice. And isn’t that the American way?

eBay sellers decided to boycott eBay listings in order to protest the recent changes in the feedback policy and fee-hikes. The listings dropped 13% or 13 million items in a week, reports USA Today, citing third party sources. eBay denies that there has been any impact on its listings. I don’t buy the company line in this case. eBay and its management needs to take a cold hard look at why the sellers took such an extreme step. In my opinion it is a corporate low-point for any company when your customers decide to strike and boycott you? By the way, eBay’s new nickname FeeBay is quite funny actually.

So it’s official: Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, will retire in March, making way for her former Bain Capital colleague John Donahoe, who currently runs eBay’s Marketplaces business. The news of Whitman’s desire to leave the San Jose, Calif.-based auctions giant was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The news is seen as a positive in some quarters, especially those who believe that Whitman has let one of the biggest web brands drift. Overpaying for Skype and other strategic bungles (China, for instance) have tarnished what for the first six years was a blemish-less tenure for Whitman. Of course, one can’t blame her for leaving – she’s worth $1.4 billion.

That said, she is leaving the company at a particularly perilous time. The stock is down 15 percent year-to-date, and there is still downward pressure on earnings and revenues. The biggest culprit: eBay’s core auction business, which is run by — you guessed it — CEO-in-waiting John Donahoe.

Which leads me to the big question: Why is Donahoe the right candidate for the job? And why are analysts in love with this guy, who is a management consultant with little knowledge of technology or the auctions business? All we have read are news reports that he has been anointed as the company’s heir apparent, but I have yet to hear him outline the big rescue for eBay.

And if you look at his track record since coming over from Bain (where he worked for Whitman), the best grade you could give him is a “B.” He has been with eBay for three years and in those three years, Marketplaces contribution to the overall eBay revenues has dropped from 70.8 percent from 76.9 percent. In a press release announcing his appointment, the company says:

In this role, Donahoe has been responsible for the growth of eBay and its other ecommerce businesses around the world, and during the time he has managed this business unit, both revenues and profits doubled.

We beg to differ. Look at this graph based on data provided by Wall Street analysts:

Furthermore, in 2005, Marketplaces accounted for $3.5 billion of eBay’s total $4.55 billion in revenue, roughly 76.9 percent. In 2006, the segment brought in $4.3 billion, or 72 percent of the company’s roughly $6 billion in overall sales. In 2007, at $5.2 billion, that number has dropped to 67.8 percent of total revenue of $7.67 billion. In short, despite today’s results, it is clear that the growth in the Marketplaces division has slowed, and in three years all that has happened is a marginal overhaul of the web site. The PayPal business, by comparison, is ramping up nicely.

Does Donahoe even understand the Skype and PayPal businesses? Will his tenure as head of Marketplaces be enough to prepare him to guide eBay in the future? I am told he is a great guy, a true people person, and that is good quality to have in a CEO. But it’s not enough.

The eBay Executive Musical Chairs

Meg Whitman will step down as President and CEO of eBay on March 31, 2008. She will remain on the company’s Board of Directors.

John Donahoe, President and CEO, will replace Whitman.

Rajiv Dutta, currently the President of PayPal, will replace Donahoe as President of eBay Marketplaces.

Scott Thompson, PayPal’s current Chief Technology Officer, will replace Dutta as President of PayPal.

Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America, is leaving the company.

Lorrie Norrington, currently President of eBay International, will become President of eBay Marketplaces Operations and replace Cobb.

Vint Cerf’s Facebook profile includes a picture of him wearing his favorite t-shirt: it reads “IP on Everything.” Cerf co-authored the 1973 paper that led to TCP/IP being used as a means to interconnect previously incompatible computers and networks associated with the ARPANET. Increasingly, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is playing a similar role as the common denominator interconnecting diverse communication devices and networks. And although the protocol geeks either love or hate SIP, its rapid adoption makes it impossible to ignore.

Although Microsoft and Cisco offer competing visions of the future of communication, they both support SIP. Skype rose to fame via a proprietary protocol, but Skype utilizes SIP as the means to connect with the telephone network. Several dozen device manufacturers — from Nokia and Philips to Sony and Siemens — offer SIP-enabled devices, and virtually every other consumer electronics company on the planet plans to roll out SIP-enabled devices over the next 12 months. Ten million SIP-enabled phones have sold to enterprise customers. Avaya, Nortel and Siemens may argue over who has the best features, but they all support SIP.

The entry-level price for an SIP telephone fell to $40 in 2007 from $400 in 2002. Chip manufacturers like Texas Instruments and Broadcom already have third-generation functionality in the pipeline. Best Buy et al do not currently carry SIP phones, but web sites dedicated to SIP-enabled products (e.g. telephonydepot.com) arrived in 2007. Hundreds of companies (e.g. Betamax Group) bridge SIP calls to the traditional telephone network. Fring provides free software that turns mobile handsets into SIP clients enabling voice and IM functionality via Wi-Fi and 2G or 3G data plans.

The patent woes of SIP-based Vonage seem to have squelched the stream of SIP VoIP startups for the time being. For some 20 years, the TCP-IP protocol that Vint co-created achieved very little in the way of public awareness until the arrival of Mark Andreessen’s web browser. Cheap telephone calls represent SIP’s thin edge, but SIP still needs its web browser moment.

Solutions exist for the early obstacles encountered by SIP, such as NAT and firewall traversal. Adobe’s plans for integrating SIP into Flash may go a long way toward unleashing more creativity. SIP continues to evolve with peer-to-peer SIP arriving to challenge client-server SIP during 2008. Yet we remain in the horseless carriage phase, in which everything gets framed in terms of the old model. SIP phones do little more than replicate the features and functions of traditional telephones.

In any case, to quote Victor Hugo, “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.” In the 100 years between 1876 and the 1980s, the painfully slow pace of innovation associated with wired telephone monopolies meant that a mere 600 million people were able to use the telephone as a means of communication. Over the next 25 years, competition between cellular carriers increased the pace of innovation enough to allow the technology to reach two billion people. Now, an even faster pace of cost performance improvements positions an infocom ecosystem of SIP devices as the solution to bring communication to four billion people. The time has come for SIP.

Remember how we complained about Google-owned GrandCentral doing a switcheroo on their promise of one number for life? Well, Skype is doing the same to some Londoners who have SkypeIn mumbers. The company sent an email to some of the “0207″ number owners with this explanation…

We’re very sorry to tell you that we have to change your SkypeIn number. As some of you may know, we get SkypeIn numbers from a variety of telecoms suppliers. Unfortunately, we have to return some of the 0207 SkypeIn numbers to one of our suppliers of London numbers.

The numbers stop working on Dec. 20th. The company says it will give you a new SkypeIn number and voicemail for free for 12 months. Many of these numbers could be in the 0208 numbers and 0203 area codes, Skype says. That said, it is pretty lame for the company to pull a stunt like this, especially a company as big as Skype. Their excuse is pretty weak.

Updated: Facebook Responds, and explains.

It has been 48 hours since I asked Facebook to clarify the point about whether a user’s data is still being passed to them from their web partners even after the user chooses to opt out of Beacon.

I’ve since given it a lot of thought and decided that I was not being judgmental in my previous post. Here, after all, is what Mark Zuckerberg told Portfolio.

• “The ads are going to feel like content to a lot of people.”
• “There is no opting out of advertising.”

Scary, isn’t it? Anyway, Nate Weiner, writing on Idea Shower, is also worried about Beacon — and he’s come to a similar conclusion: Any opt out is that of perception and publishing. (He came to this conclusion while playing games over on Kongregate.)

The problem however is, that even though you can choose whether or not it is made public that you visited these sites, Facebook still has the data regardless of your privacy settings. Now I don’t mean to sound like I’m tin-foil-hat-wearing paranoid, but that does seem to encroach a little past what Facebook’s role in my life should be.

Weiner (via Deep Jive Interests) has suggestions on how to avoid the whole Beacon thing — you need to use this Firefox plugin. My view is this: Let’s not use the 44 sites that have partnered with Facebook till each one puts a public disclosure on their site saying that no data is being passed to it.

It is going to be hard living without some of these big giants, but in most cases there are options. For instance, Fandango, which is owned by Comcast (CMCSA), is not going to get any business from me — 777 Film is a good alternative. Blockbuster (BBI) gets the boot, and eBay (EBAY)? Okay maybe I am being a little paranoid!

And as far as Facebook is concerned, I am still waiting for their clarifications.

Updated: Here is what Facebook says. I am also speaking with one of their senior executives on Monday, so if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Facebook designed Beacon so Facebook users could choose to share information about interesting actions they are taking on other websites with their friends on Facebook. As part of Beacon, Facebook built several ways that users can choose to not share any information. Each time an action can be shared, users receive a prompt on a Beacon-participating site where users can choose “No, thanks.” If they choose not to share a specific action, Facebook immediately deletes and does not store any data that was used to generate the Beacon. In all cases, Facebook does not share any personally identifiable information with participating sites. Along with the choices a user has on a Beacon site, users also have the ability to change their settings on Facebook. A user can select to remove any participating Beacon site from ever sending any information to Facebook to share with their friends.

James Surowiecki, reknown author, speaker and the financial correspondent for The New Yorker, in a recent article explains why no one in the US is feeling the pinch by the sharp decline in the dollar, unless of course they are off on an European shopping trip searching for rare Hermes bags, or bespoke Saville Row suits. “Americans are able to buy far more stuff with their flimsy currency than one would expect,” he writes.

The flimsy currency, dismissed as the new peso by some Wall Street types, is actually helping the technology companies post better than expected results. (Which also means, don’t believe the hype!)

Amazon (AMZN), for instance reported third quarter 2007 revenues that got a $75 million lift because of a weak dollar. Or Google (GOOG) for that matter. Had the currency rates remained stable, the search giants says its 3rd quarter 2007 revenues would have been lower by about $121 million when compared to the 3Q 2006.

Derek Brown, analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, pointed out that eBay recently posted an upside that was “fueled almost exclusively by FX (currency) gains, acquisitions, and a much lower-than-expected tax burden.” He estimated that eBay’s revenue was boosted by $54 million and operating income by $24 million because of a weak dollar.

Like Yahoo (YHOO) yesterday, eBay’s (EBAY) stock is up following its third-quarter earnings report, rising some 3 percent. But while eBay is making progress at getting its business growing again, there are still a couple of issues to consider, namely falling operating margins and the nagging question of what to do with Skype.

eBay’s revenue grew a healthy 30 percent in the quarter, down just slightly from the 31 percent growth rate in the third quarter of 2006. The organic growth rate tells an even more impressive story. Organic revenue grew 23 percent in the latest three-month period, up from the 20 percent rise a year ago. In other words, eBay is making more from its core business without having to import revenue growth through acquisitions.

So far, so good. But it’s a little troubling to see the operating margin fall to 31.4 percent, its smallest margin in several quarters. Last quarter, non-GAAP operating margin was 32.4 percent and a year ago, it was 32.1 percent. In short, revenue is growing, but the cost of running eBay has been growing faster.

Revenue rose 26 percent in eBay’s marketplace business, flat with last quarter, while PayPal revenue increased 35 percent, above the 34 percent growth last quarter. Skype was a little less impressive. Revenue did rise to $96 million from $90 million, but that growth feels a little slow for a business that was hoped to be lucratively disruptive, and it’s still only 5 percent of eBay’s total revenue.

But eBay has vowed to put the overvalued price it paid for Skype behind it, and some of the metrics included show why. Although 246 million users are signed up for Skype, the number of Skype-to-Skype minutes has fallen 8 percent year-over-year, to 6.1 billion.

And while Skype Out minutes (which bring in revenue) are up 25 percent year-over-year, to 1.4 billion minutes, they are still less than a quarter of the free Skype-to-Skype calls. Skype is doing OK, but it’s not the growth driver and synergistically magical force eBay had hoped for.

Skype’s book value was $2 billion after the revaluation, or six times the trailing 12 month revenue. But if you divide the book value of eBay’s total business by the $4.9 billion it’s made in the last 12 months, you get a much lower number, 2.4. So Skype needs to grow to justify even its new valuation.