October 17, 2007 5:10 AM
MySpace Teams Up with Skype
The New York Times reports that News Corp’s popular social networking website MySpace, and eBay’s VOIP program Skype will exchange vows sometime soon as MySpace adds the Skype features to its instant-messaging (IM) software. The team-up of these two large web-based services is considered a perfect fit that will help them keep up with similar services such as Yahoo and Microsoft who already provide users capability to make voice calls on top of its instant messaging feature.
Under the new partnership, Skype’s voice call services will be integrated into MySpace’s IM technology allowing MySpace members to place free calls to people in both networks. To protect privacy, members whose profiles are set to “private” will be exempt from calls of people who are not in their friends’ list.
Although still one of the leading name in the field of social networking, MySpace is fast losing the spotlight to Facebook, another social networking site that has gained much popularity quite recently. And with eBay’s admission that its acquisition of Skype hasn’t turned out as well as anticipated, the deal can help increase their market share. With MySpace clients of over 110 million users, mostly concentrated in the United States, and Skypes clients around the globe of about 220 million users, owners of these two already large online services are optimistic that the move will boost exposure and appeal to users.
The two companies said that they will split the revenues though no details of the financial terms have been released as of yet. So for now it’s a wait and see whether the partnership between social networking and communications applications will give birth to the largest voice-connected online community.
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