Thursday, September 08, 2005
Skype Partners With Voxeo Amidst eBay Acquisition Rumors
I'm proud of myself for keeping this secret for so long but I can finally talk about it. My employer, Voxeo, officially announced our partnership with Skype. Skype only chose 3 platform & hosting providers. Voxeo & TellMe, the two best providers in the U.S. and Map Telecom, a large European provider (in affiliation with VoxPilot). Basically, IVR developers can build ivr applications [marketers - think viral now] on Voxeo's free evolution developer network and then get them approved by Skype. Once approved the app moves into production and a stay-at-home developer will have his app listed in the Skype directory and exposed to their 52 million users. The app doesn't have to generate money but it most certainly can, that's up to the developer to decide. They could build a voice auctioning eBay app, build the next great viral marketing voice app, all sorts of stuff and Skype handles all the billing details. The developer gets a hefty percentage [varies by platform provider but I'm partial to Voxeo since they're my homies] and the developer doesn't even have to get a merchant account.Pause for a minute, and think about what this means for small - agile businesses and for Skype. Skype is partnering with one of the best IVR platform providers to extend their brand, is increasing it's revenue by making it easy for developers to market their apps, and pumping up it's value while the rest of the world talks about how eBay is going to buy Skype for 2 - 3 billion dollars.
From the developer's perspective you should be thinking about industries in which it's hard to get a merchant account due to high chargebacks that involves the voice industry. There are several of them but follow that line of thought and you'll see what I'm hinting at.
Posted By Jason Dowdell at 11:23 AM
Permanent Link: Skype Partners With Voxeo Amidst eBay Acquisition Rumors
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