Sunday, February 04, 2007
eBay and Skype - a $2.6 billion deal and they are still not talking
I stumbled across eBay's IM auction alerts service today. Clicking through to set up an alert I was amazed to find that after spending $2.6 billion on Skype over a year ago that they have not yet integrated Skype's IM.
Obviously I'm not the first to spot this, Kevin
What do other IM networks have that Skype doesn't? I have an answer. Reliability. Skype's P2P architecture makes having a reliable server-side client next to impossible.I would have thought that it would be possible for eBay to be set up as a special type of super node to gain more direct access. A work in progress?
eBay's IM alert service is at : http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SubscribeIMItem&ItemId= type a valid eBay item ID after the = sign.
Labels: skype ebay IM
