Skype has proved to be an important part of eBay’s third quarter results, even as the online retailer and auction host continues to try to sell Skype. The online communication hub has posted a revenue growth of 29 percent, a growth that has helped eBay to post a revenue growth of 6 percent to $2.24 billion.
Analysts did not expect eBay’s revenue to grow so much, instead predicting an average of $2.14 billon for the company. According to eBay, this year-over-year growth was mostly driven by continued growth in its PayPal and Skype divisions, as well as by the expansion of its …read more

A couple years ago, StumbleUpon was sold to EBay for $75 million. Today, the original founders of StumbleUpon have purchased the website back from EBay for an undisclosed amount of money.
Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith are the two original founders of StumbleUpon. Those two founders got help buying back the website from other investors including Accel Partners, August Capital and Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures.
When EBay purchased StumbleUpon, there were less than three million users. Currently, the most recent estimate has StumbleUpon with approximately 7.5 million users.
The StumbleUpon service is a recommendation service in which users recommend websites to other …read more

Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis became billionaires when the sold the Internet phone company to eBay in 2005 for over $3 billion. Since selling their baby, the duo hasn’t slowed down – they’ve founded a venture capital firm and supported video service Joost.

Now, however, it seems that the two have another business move in mind – buying back Skype. When eBay bought the service, it had around 53 million users, but today, there are more than 405 million people using Skype to make free calls between one another and very cheap international calls to non-Skype users. In the …read more

Okay, this isn’t about writing, but I want to share it anyway. I still use a landline phone – I don’t even have a cell phone, and I haven’t made the move yet to Skype, but that’s another story. My phone provider is also my DSL provider and my long distance provider, mostly because it’s way simpler.
Over the last almost four years, I’ve called my phone company three or four times a year and simply asked if there’s any way they can reduce my bill – not can I reduce it, but is there some plan or scheme they’ve got …read more