Skype: Turning Phone Numbers Into Paid Ads
While eBay prepares to unload Skype via a sale or IPO, it is busy looking for new ways to make money off its 405 million global users.
They already account for an estimated 8 percent of international calls, and many of them are increasingly paying for SkypeOut calls to regular phones. Its revenues last year were $551 million, but it wants to get to $1 billion by 2011. To get there, it might have to start thinking local.
In fact, it has already started trials in Europe and New Zealand with Yellow Pages businesses that turn business phone numbers on the Web into free calls.
While eBay prepares to unload Skype via a sale or IPO next year, it is busy looking for new ways to make money off its 405 million global users. They already account for an estimated 8 percent of international calls, and many of them are increasingly paying for SkypeOut calls to regular phones. Its revenues last year were $551 million, but it wants to get to $1 billion by 2011. To get there, it might have to start thinking local.
In fact, it has already started trials in Europe and New Zealand with Yellow Pages businesses that turn business phone numbers on the Web into free calls.
The idea Skype is playing with is to make those calls, or at least some of them, free to consumers. Instead, a Yellow Pages company would buy up the calling minutes in bulk and either offer it as part of the fees it charges businesses to list their numbers in its directory or charge the businesses on a click-to-call basis.
Photo by Skype.
Jaclyn on April 29th, 2009 7:21 am
That is interesting. Good luck to them in the future on hitting their $1 billion dollar goal.
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