The globally read International Herald Tribune has a critical story about Skype. Despite the best spin doctoring from the corporate types at eBay, writer Kevin J. O'Brien has gone out and basically given eBay a swat, saying the purchase isn't showing what the investors want.
Lots of bloggers and friends are quoted in the story. Om Malik, Phil Wolfe, Irwin Lazar, Jeff Pulver and Martin Geddes.
In a nutshell the story points out the turnover of people at Skype, and also says the management of it by eBay has been "disappointing."
In the story Om is quotedt about politics within eBay, but as I've pointed out before, almost a year ago, the way eBay operates, and what Skype's culture was/is and as O'Brien also points out, it's not working.
O'Brien als did a very good job of keeping the story about Skype, and the notes about China sure puts things in perspective too.
Does this mean Skype is a loser? No. What it means is Meg Whitman and her now handpicked group of cronies who are running the Skype show are just not the right fit for running a disruptive concept. My thought is they should buy SipPhone and MP3Tunes, and install Michael Robertson in as president of Disruptive, Inc, and leave him alone to run the company. Then eBay would have the innovative spirit. Of course, they won't do it, but it would be a very interesting game if they did.
You see, there is too much "smarts" at eBay to not make this work. They have tons of potential, Meg is smart, so are her cronies. They just have to let some other smart people into play with them. Then they will change the game the way she envisioned and everyone, including the investors and the earn-out holders will be happy.
All this talk, coming around the beta release of Skype 3.0 is good news in my view. Controversy is never a bad thing, as long as you know how to embrace it. I say that, especially after reading this TechCrunchUK post which points more towards the direction a Michael Robertson approach would lead. With Len Pryor departing the developer program for other eBay activities and a new marshal in town with the Skype Developer program, one can only hope that the most disruptive program of our time has the leadership chops to counter the naysayers and do something bold and different.
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