After discussing a few things Vika and I came up with a useful scenario where Skype could provide a whole new market of opportunity.
At present, Skype’s main source of income lies on the border between a virtual and physical worlds. Anything that crosses the boundary is usually charged for. This means if you want to call from your Skype client to a plain old phone, you’ll pay. If you want people to call regular numbers and reach you on skype you pay again. This is all understood and is pretty exhausted by now - not many new features are being added.
The new idea we came up with is to allow people to make money by specifying how much a call to a particular account costs. Skype could then keep a percentage just like iTunes store keeps a share of profits from App, Music and Movie sales.
It would work like this: I’ve got an account named “example.support”. Somewhere I specify that calls to this number cost “$10/minute”. On my website I put a note saying that I provide paid support for $10/minute via skype. If you need my support, you add “example.support” to your friends and make a call. Skype tells you that a call to this account is not free. If you have enough money in your account, your call is connected. I pick up, talk to you for 3 minutes. Your account is charged $30. My account is credited with $30.
In order for this to be attractive there needs to be a way to move money into the real world. Luckily for Skype, it’s sibling PayPal can do just that. I would “send” my $30 to my PayPal account and be charged the usual transfer fees. Everybody wins.
To make it more fun, video may be charged at a different rate. I can already imagine a zillion of useful customizable things to make it more into a real-world tool.
What do you think?
