e-Bay and Skype

I'm a long term user of Skype: bleedin' marvellous system. However, there has been talk that the purchase of the company by e-Bay hasn't been all that great a success. Quite why an auction site would want to buy a telecoms provider was the first question....the value of the company didn't in fact come from its technology, which is easily repeatable, but from the number of people who used it, something that e-Bay shouldn't really have been interested in.

There was also the recent comments by the e-Bay CEO that there hadn't been all that much innovation or driving forward of the Skype platform in the time since the purchase: as the founding management were too focused on making sure they hit the earnings targets so that they could collect the final chunk of the purchase price.

But might I point the new management to a small signal that something is indeed going wrong?

This email arrived in my inbox this morning.

Yes, I'm being reminded to get all smoochy on the phone the day after Valentine's Day.

Obviously calendars are too low tech for these guys.