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Jajah Buttons Swatted For Rattling eBay's Cage |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Sunday, 07 October 2007 |
Auction house
eBay, which last week wrote down it's massive investment in Peer-To-Peer
phone company, Skype, has reportedly removed auctions from its sites
which carried "Call Me" button from a competitive VoIP company Jajah.
The reports explain that eBay defended its action as the
widgets, which were launched recently by JaJah, were a violation of the
company's terms of service.
An email from eBay to sellers who had their auctions removed explains: "The listing was
removed because it violated the eBay Inappropriate Links policy ...
links or other connections to live chat systems are not permitted."
The
move was a pretty provocative publicity stunt Jajah, which even
promoted the Call Me buttons as "optimised for eBay" even though it
must have known the reaction users would get.
The
Jajah Call Me widgets would allow prospective bidders to contact
Sellers for free without a VoIP phone as the Jajah system places a call
to each end-point on a regular phone. As VoIP is used between callers,
the system means long distance calls are possible at extremely low
rates, which would be charged to the Seller in this instance.
One of the stated
reasons fro eBay to buy P2P broadband VoIP company Skype was to include
such capability on eBay auctions, but so far the roll-out has been very
slow with the system only made available to PowerSellers.
According to reports, Jajah co-founder Roman Scharf
is seeking clarification from eBay as the situation varies from country
to country, but it seems unlikely the provocative move will be allowed
by the auction house despite the petition Scharf has started over the issue.
"Our vision was simply to bring voice communication to one of the
world's greatest marketplaces for eCommerce. With millions of
registered users, JAJAH is hardly an 'inappropriate' organization. We
were seeing great excitement for JAJAH Buttons on eBay and we are
disappointed that some of our users' listings are now being removed. We
are currently seeking to get clarification from eBay as the situation
varies from country to country. While we get positive feedback from
within eBay in several countries we see other countries removing
listings that contain JAJAH buttons," says JAJAH Co-Founder Roman
Scharf.
eBay made headlines last week as Skype Co-Founder Niklas Zennstrom vacated the position as CEO and accepted a settlement offer to cancel the massive 'earnout' contract he and other Skype shareholders had with eBay following the acquisition in 2005.
Combined with a US$900 million write down of the book value of its Skype investment, the payout means eBay take a one and a half Billion U.S. dollar charge against the value of the Skype asset and is widely seen as eBay's first admission that it paid too much for the telephony service provider.
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