Thinking About Skype and eBay

We spoke to a company that's already offering voice services to eBay users to learn more about the Skype buy specifically and about VoIP opportunities in general.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 6, 2005]

"The difference between us and Skype is that we don't have 54 million users because we don't give our product away for free," jokes DC Cullinane, founder and CEO of Mountain View, Calif.-based thinkingVOICE.

Cullinane says that the acquisition of Luxembourg-based Skype by San Jose, Calif.-based eBay makes sense for many reasons. The first is growth. "eBay is a very robust marketplace with over 150 million global buyers, half of them in the U.S. They may be seeing a slowdown in the growth rate of the number of buyers and sellers on their network."

But Skype can do more than bring users to eBay; it can bring entire business lines to eBay, Cullinane says. He should know—they're already customers of thinkingVOICE. Cullinane's company offers click to call (and much more) to businesses, allowing them to place an advertisement on Google or eBay that generates a call instead of a click. The company's SIP servers call the caller and the seller, connecting an internet generated call through the PSTN.

"With Skype, eBay can expand into the service industries. They can serve attorneys, contractors, dry cleaners, who knows! They can serve anybody who values a lead but doesn't want to build a website. eBay caters to people whose business involves posting, listing, selling, and shipping. Service based businesses, such as contractors, can post pictures of what they do, but the buyer wants to talk."

Service businesses are local (just like many ISPs) because they depend upon in-person service.

Sean Wani, thinkingVOICE vice president of business development, thinks thinkingVOICE might have had a part in inspiring eBay to buy Skype. "The folks at eBay Motors were excited about what we were doing. They understood that we were useful for that kind of buyer. You could say the wheels started to turn in their mind."

Of course, he doesn't claim that thinkingVOICE was the only inspiration. "Then, later down the road, Yahoo bought Dialpad, Microsoft bought Teleo, and Google did Google Talk."

Wani says ISPs might play in the yellow pages business. "The yellow pages have reps, feet on the street, but when they start talking about the internet, how much credibility do they have? At The Kelsey Group's ILM:04 conference last year, there was a dentist who had just started getting into marketing himself on the internet. He did not want to do pay per click, to build a website and track click throughs and place ads. Pay per call was more attractive. He would give prospects a $100 credit just to make an appointment. He expanded his business from a 25 mile radius to a 45 mile radius."

Cullinane points out that businesses will pay for lead generation. "They may cut back on what they pay for the internet, but businesses will always budget aggressively for lead generation. ISPs can offer a website, but a website is just the foundation of a business. You need to add to that with marketing, sales, affiliate programs. You need to do the things that grow the business. The pay per call business is in its infancy and offers a great value proposition."

He says that thinkingVOICE is ahead of eBay at the moment, though he expects eBay to catch up because nobody knows Internet commerce better. But thinkingVOICE, unlike eBay, is interested in working directly with ISPs that have business customers. "We would love to initiate a dialog with any ISP who feels the time is right for offering click to call or pay per call services."

Cullinane notes that eBay does not yet have some of the features that thinkingVOICE has already developed. "Our system allows you to create an account, select keywords, select your business category from a tree, and build a landing page."

Not all businesses succeed in building a landing page. Even with thinkingVOICE, there's room for business consulting services. However easy you make it to build a website, some companies will still ask for help, and that need is a business opportunity for ISPs just as it is a business opportunity for service providers like thinkingVOICE.

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