Skype's Silverman---Umm, Not Exactly

Last week eBay's new leader told the Financial Times that a decision on Skype future will be made at the end of this year.

This week new Skype prexy Josh Silverman said eBay is giving all kinds of support to achieve synergies.

This is corporate chess and more importantly, well orchestrated positioning. It keeps Skype in the news at a time when they've announced new prices. It keeps eyes and ears peeled. It's so traditional PR 101 that I'm surprised so much attention is being paid to it.

Skype and eBay both need out of the box, non-traditional approaches at this point to grow. Because of PayPal eBay behaves like a financial institution, and their movements reflect that in how they have handled Skype. They make the right buys (shopping.com, PayPal, Skype, StubHub/Liquid Seats) but then try to make them in their own image as opposed to letting each brand live and breathe on their own.

eBay is so tightly wound by SOX requirements that they fail to let the highly forward thinking brands continue to break new ground which was why they bought them in the first place. They live in fear that the major banking controllers will find a wrinkle in their pin stripe suit and tread so delicately to avoid being put too often under the microscope of regulators and legislators. And that all rolls up and around the eBay Marketplace in the end, impacting each and every acquisition they make.

Screw synergy with eBay, the marketplace, and start thinking of eBay the company and synergy that way.

How much of a genius does one need to be to realize that the reason many eBay sellers are on eBay is that they DON'T want to talk with their customers. Many sellers likely aren't available during the day, as they use the eBay marketplace as a second job, as a hedge against their own potential job loss in an economy that is challenging. What's more, for the "professional" seller, many are automated offerings from inventory of distributors by storefronts that could never support the concept of telephone based customer service. Not at the margins or prices they are selling at.

On the other hand, there are markets where eBay could be changing the game and rely more upon bands like shopping.com, StubHub, PayPal and Skype's technology on an integrated basis. High priced luxury items. eBay Motors. Real Estate, Vacation homes, specialty items. Custom crafted products. Imagine a high end artisan who crafts one of a kind furniture who only produces 10 pieces a year, but is in demand. He can auction his or her services, show the works via Skype to prospective buyers. Those buyers then could use the StubHub technology to offer the item within eBay better than they can with eBay by selling the option to acquire it. Skype plays a role here too.

What eBay (the company) is not really doing is looking forward. Instead they are saying "integrate with what we have today" and not being out of the box and saying how can this company take what we have, and do something new without going outside and buying it like we did the last few times.

As such, eBay needs to spin PayPal out, not Skype, then become their biggest customer. That frees them of their banking and thrift regulatory hurdles and lets them really integrate, innovate and excel.