Now the fun begins--more comments on eBay and Skype and market implications:

Nivi imagines eBay should next buy SixApart and writes: 'Ebay cannot accept the risk of having a powerful supplier that essentially has a monopoly on VoIP because Skype has a viral product that runs on a closed network with network effects. You could describe Paypal the same way: a viral product that runs on a closed network with network effects."

Michael Parekh says: " Wired and wireless voice communications are being cut loose, from the predictable, steady, metered subscription revenue streams of the past few decades, to having to fend for themselves. .. In the eBay/Skype case, they'll have to be supported through seemingly esoteric but potentially potent new revenue opportunities like "pay-per-call" (a twist on the "pay-per-click" model popularized by Internet advertising companies. Incidentally, pay-per-call is not a hypothetical exercise."

Umair's as shrewd as usual and takes an economics systems approach: "Web 2.0 is about the shift from network search economies, which realize mild exponential gains - your utility is bounded by the number of things (people, etc) you can find on the network - to network coordination economies, which realize combinatorial gains: your utility is bounded by the number of things (transactions, etc) you can do on the network. " So in his world, Skype is another platform with a transactional user base (as opposed to the NYTimes) and that's the future.

Having fun yet? I sure am.

eBay explains the deal to its investors via a packet of presos (via Paid Content)

Ross Mayfield says "Skype will provide eBay a communications platform for the other half of it's market -- the conversations. eBay will enhance the liquidity of it's spot market, gains a business with great fundamentals, positioning for yellow pages business, further infrastructure for billing, payment and -- identity."
Jeff Clavier weighs in: "eBay is spending about half of its cash reserve to acquire the VoIP company, at a stratospheric multiple (based on Skype?s rumored revenue levels)....and "A key learning: after this one, no deal is impossible or unthinkable."
Richard McKinnon writes: "This would have to be the fastest richification of two founders ever! 2 years after starting Skype, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis are billionaires. Cool. More. It was the IPO of Netscape in the ninties, a company with no revenue, just converts to an idea, the browser, that ignited the first internet era. Was that just ten years ago? Is this that deal of the second internet era?"
Chris Carfi says the key points are: An opportunity to extend eBay communities to the desktop; a strategic move into emerging markets; integration of PayPal into the Skype interface.

Susan sez: All the above are true, but the two bellwethers, for me, are eBay's diversification into another powerful platform business (VOIP + community) and the global nature of the deal--this is the acceleration of eBay's ongoing growth across the planet.