What Price Identity? 49 Bucks.

Identity
Author: Mark Dixon
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
1:12 pm

Phil
Windley justified eBay’s purchase of Skype by stating today that both "eBay
and Skype were both huge repositories of identity data." I understand that
Skype has 53 million registered users. Based on eBay’s offer of $2.6 billion,
each Skype identity is worth 49 bucks. That’s a lot of free phone calls.

Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
eBay
Skype
Phil Windley

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2 Responses to “What Price Identity? 49 Bucks.”

With Skype – only the free Phone calls are free, everything else you pay for (ie. PC->POTS).

For example – I spend about US$100 a year with Skype and I imagine Skype’s costs are very low so that’s probably 75% margin (I appreciate for everyone like me there’s probably 50 who don’t pay a penny).

But that’s academic – this isn’t about current revenue – this is all about future potential (ie, it’s a subscriber grab).

Comment by Rich Sharples on September 13, 2005 at 3:37 pm



Thanks for the comment. I agree that this is a subscriber grab – reminiscent of the mobile phone and cable TV subscriber grab in the late 1990’s. It will be interesting how eBay capitalizes on this big handful of subscribers (and future potential) they grabbed.

Comment by Mark Dixon on September 14, 2005 at 2:45 am