Former Skype director is right: eBay sellers won't automatically buy SkypeMe buttons

I note that former Skype director Danny Rimer said something interesting at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco yesterday.

"There is nothing that (Skype-acquirer) eBay can do to close up [keep it eBay centric] because of Skype," he said. "You're not going to convince merchants to pay more because of Skype. It's about trust.

"If they can provide a service that has incremental value," Rimer added, "the buyer and seller will stay."

This seems to me to be an argument that eBay merchants are not going to automatically pay extra for SkypeMe buttons next to their listings just on potential, aggressive promotions, articulation of Skype's download count or similarly fashioned salescraft.

Rimer seems to be saying eBay sellers are just not going to pay extra unless they are absolutely convinced it is in their best interest to do so.

That will take even more than successful stories. Knowing very well how the eBay community works (up until recently, my sister was an eBay power seller and we talk frequently), this is a community that talks amongst themselves a lot, and is far more receptive to the attitudes spawned by such discussions than they are to marketing-driven exhaltations and spin.

So I guess what I am saying here is that there will need to be an absolute groundswell of enthusiasm from the eBay seller community before SkypeMe buttons become de rigeur on auction listings.