What do you do when you own the world's biggest auction site, VoIP network, and online payment service? Hook 'em all together, of course. Today there's a bunch of news floating around about Skype being integrated with both eBay and PayPal. First is a little screenshot from Random Good Stuff that shows
two new PayPal functions in the upcoming Skype 2.5, one for sending money via Skype and one for requesting money. Not exactly mind-blowing, but for people who conduct business over Skype it could definitely come in handy. Second is eBay's announcement last night that it would be
integrating Skype into its auction pages. On June 19 a pilot program in 14 of eBay's auction categories will allow sellers to place a "SkypeMe" button on their auctions. Marshall Kirkpatrick at TechCrunch has a list of all 14 categories (obvious: wired networking routers, VoIP/Internet telephony; not so obvious: beds, silver coins, Lost in Space collectibles) and some thought on the offering. Like Marshall, I'm not sure how fast this will take off, if at all.
Tags: auctions, ebay, payments, paypal, skype, voip
