Click in your browser and your phone rings. Skype needs to offer this relatively stupid, underfeatured stuff. Because this stupid stuff is faster, simpler, and more familiar than Voice Over Instant Messaging.

• Jajah does one simple thing: bridge two phone numbers. It does it brilliantly, letting people trigger calls from phones and web pages. Click-to-call. Easy peezy.

• Lypp does the same sort of thing, but at the programming level, launching conference calls for groups of people in social networks. (Congratulations on the launch, Lypp)

• Truphone works like Jajah, but from hybrid cell/wi-fi mobile phones, routing calls over the Internet when it can.

• Jaduka, like Lypp, rents their phone network connections so anyone can build their own Jaja, Lypp or Truphone. A programming platform for for connecting web apps to the public telephone network, and billing for it.

eBay is no pool of early adopters. Buyers are conditioned for "Victory!" Buyers exhibit the same gamer twitch responses as stock market day traders. Attention spans measured in milliseconds.  

So when buyers have that precious, fleeting impulse to call a seller, you don't want them taking time out to {download, install, register, test your hardware, learn to dial}. A dive into Internet telephony is a complete tangent to on-site buyer goals at eBay.

mock Skype 'call me' button, with apologies to Jajah

So Skype needs a faster way to get virgins to try Skype. To use Skype. To use Skype the Brand.

Skype-the-brand is not Skype-the-technology.

Skype-branding a Jajah-like experience (type in

You can tempt buyers to download/upgrade on the basis of their great "Skype Lite" experience. If the business goal is to help buyers and sellers engage, to foster conversations that lead to category invigoration, then you cannot let your software get in the way.

It comes down to the Skype brand. Does Skype stand for a specific software experience? Or for rich communication, whenever, however you need it?

As for Lypp and Jaduka, can the Skype brand also mean...

"we power the programmers who power conversation"?

Next post: Why hasn't Skype done this yet?