Legal Research

They’re Leaving Home After Living Alone For So Many Years (Bye Bye)

On Friday I read a NY Times article about how Skype’s founders are trying to arrange financing so they can buy their Internet-based phone service back from eBay. In 2005 eBay bought Skype for about $3 billion.

Then yesterday I read about how StumbleUpon, a Web 2.0 social bookmarking darling, has become a startup again, two years after being bought by eBay for $75 million.

Neither service was a good fit with what eBay does best — allowing one group of people to sell unwanted junk to another set of people. And it’s amazing what a recession will do to these Web 2.0 services that sound good on paper but whose business plans don’t always work in the real world — it just thins out the herd.

Anyway, with apologies to The Beatles:

They (we gave them much of our cash)
are leaving (sacrificed tons of our cash)
home (we gave them everything money could buy)
They’re leaving home after living alone for
so many years (bye bye)

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on April 14, 2009 (boomark / email).