Ebay are selling Skype.

Which I guess puts the end of my whole "skypal" thing. I'm sort of surprised that nothing came of it. OTOH, I'm not that surprised given that Ebay doesn't seem to be much of a "visionary" company at all. Can't remember when they actually did anything interesting given their size / potential influence.

Marc Andreesen joins EBay.

Hmmm. Is it just coincidence that Donahoe is talking about powerful communities when Andreessen’s current baby–Ning–is a social networking platform. Can you say exit strategy?

Admittedly, that eBay buying Ning idea is a leap, but crazier things–like eBay’s acquisition of Skype–have happened.

I must admit that I've warmed to the new Ning. It turns out to be pretty useful for putting a quick YASNS together. Buying it (and Andreesen) would definitely be a good move for EBay (if they can avoid wasting the opportunities the way they have Skype and Paypal)

The end of SkyPal? (Hat-tip Exmosis)

WTF? Craziness, no?

What EBay should be doing :

a) make development of Skype plugins more accessible. (Note that the Skype home-page doesn't have a "for developers" link, how much excited discussion is there among developers about the potential of this?)

b) EBay have got a ready made social networking service in Skype's contact lists. The clever thing to do would be to find ways to build on that social network.

c) unify Skype, PayPal and EBay accounts (much as Yahoo and Google have been doing with the properties they bought)

Dave's interesting take on commodification ... it's gonna put prima-donna developers out of business?

I'm not sure I totally buy the idea that people will put more of their data up for themselves. In a recent chat with Folknology we were discussing who would be the natural company to bring customers directly into the cloud. Ie. who would resell Amazon et al's commodity infrastructure and storage as non-exploitative way of managing your online identity (as opposed to evil Facebook, Microsoft or Google who want to own your online identity and relationships in order to resell you.)

Perhaps blog-software providers like Six Apart or Wordpress? Perhaps EBay who already controls some important information about your trustworthiness? Although Amazon provide this infrastructure, it seems like there's a conflict of interest with them wanting to sell to you.

Ironically, it may be that this conflict of interest makes it especially hard for a web 2.0 internet playa ... anyone too closely associated with an advertising funded model seems suspect. Anyone too closely associated with data-mining, collaborative filtering or Amazon-style "users who bought this also bought ..." are suspect.

Outside speculation ... could it be Apple who have the genius to create a slick iMe device they can sell to you, containing your electronic identity and social network, tethered to an always on phone system? (Perhaps in the form of a little voodoo doll, that has your face. :-) ...

Or some other name more closely associated with personal communication than online networks? Actually, could Microsoft would be in with a chance if they promoted it as the next development of Outlook rather than try to make it part of some grand everything-under-one-Live-umbrella scheme.

Remember ... the user is the platform.

I wonder why EBay is in such trouble?

Then again, I wonder why we never hear anything interesting at all from them in terms of new technology ideas?

EBay may buy StumbleUpon