Chris Harris

5 Reasons Why Its YES to a Skype & Facebook Union

Rumours have it that European VOIP provider Skype are closing in on a joint venture with Facebook or Google, with the social networking heavy-weight likely to be the forerunner in these preliminary talks. The deal would certainly assist any IPO ambitions for Skype, but I see 5 reasons for why Facebook should be the preferred partner within the walls of the Skype boardroom:

Growth potential

With a combined user base of 1.26 billion (Skype 663 million, Facebook 600 million) - we are talking about the biggest social company in the world - and puts it 2nd in the list of countries in the world behind China. That’s a hell of a lot of data - avatars, email addresses, names, locations etc. Acknowledging there is some cross-over between user-bases (though only 2.8 million likes on Facebook suggests otherwise), there would remain a huge opportunity to grow subscriptions through integrating both services across all user touch-points, recruitment tactics and product marketing.

Global reach

Historically, Skype has enjoyed a strong footing in Europe (its headquarters in Luxembourg and development team in Tallinn, Estonia and has Swedish founders) and growth markets such as Taiwan, China and Japan. The company in the past has attempted partnerships to build their user-base in the US - I remember a certain Myspace IM partnership - and Skype’s presence in the far-east and Europe would help Facebook combat competition from the likes of Orkut and Renren.

Sales potential

Ever since ebay parted with some of their stock of Skype in 2010, there has been talk of an IPO. Similarly, investors in Facebook may be eyeing up their own IPO next year. Having a successful partnership in place you’d think raise valuations for investors for both entities.

Skype also says that 35% of users utilize their services for business purposes, which may help provide an engaged user-base for any ambitions Facebook have for building on their proposition for commercial use. 

Complimentary services

Facebook are currently best-in-class for networking tools and a platform for connecting and sharing things with people you know. Excuse the rhetoric but they have significantly changed the way we communicate and are updated with our own and friends activity. Real-time chat however remains very much a bolt-on tool and not embedded within the social graph functionality. And any voice functions are left to third parties via applications (Audioboo, Google Voice, Jangl etc). You could see how Skype as a service - providing video calling, calls to mobile phones and group calls - could sit nicely with the suite of tools offered by Facebook, and increase dwell time on the site. Facebook would seem incredibly real-time with this service, when in comparison with the likes of Twitter. 

Imagine also that there could be a unified currency system to allow you to purchase Skype minutes using Facebook Credits. 

Integration

Partnerships are tricky. Different objectives, agendas, personalities and communication threaten to de-rail a union of any size but Facebook have established a standard for integration - over 250,000 websites have integrated with the Facebook platform, every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications and more than 100 million Facebook users engage with Facebook on external websites every month. That’s seriously impressive, and shows that company-wide Facebook promote openness and a frictionless environment for users. Something Skype will be expecting from a partnership with either Facebook or Google. 

Could the brains behind Facebook Connect and ‘Like’ help offer a similar proposition on the web for a voice product, unifying identity and leveraging the social graph? You would like to think so…

These are my thoughts, but what do you think? Would your Facebook usage be complimented or hindered by a Skype integration? Please add a comment and let me know…