Is Skype for sale or not? Is it considering an IPO or not? It's hard to tell what's what given the speculation about talks with Rupert Murdoch and the hiring of Morgan Stanley as a financial advisor. According to TechWeb News, the company is now claiming it is not for sale. How should this claim be taken? Does it mean Skype didn't get anywhere near the $3-billion is was apparently seeking? Is an IPO the preferred route because it will provide Skype's VCs with liquidity while allowing Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis to maintain control of the company? Questions, questions, questions! One thing we do know is Skype has signed up more than two million subscribers for its premium services, which include SkypeIn and SkypeOut. Of course, we don't know how often they actually use these services or ARPU. As for SkypeIn and SkypeOut, I wonder when/whether they will be coming to Canada.
By the way, any interested in VOIP and its future should check out Om Malik's post on the long-term impact of voice over instant-messaging applications.

The Wall St. Journal and some other publications are reporting on an interesting story about a blogger, Aaron Wall, being sued for comments made on his blog, SEOBook.com. Apparently, some of Wall's readers had unkind things to say about Traffic-Power.com. In response, Traffic-Power decided to file a lawsuit in a Nevada court, which lists several unnamed users of the blog. The WSJ said Wall could have some legal protection because the courts have ruled in the past that people who run computer message boards and mailing lists can't be held liable for comments posted by other people. It's an intriguing issue given there are so many blogs out there and most comments are made by anonymous users. But until this case is addressed by the courts, it's difficult to say whether bloggers should be worried.

For all the buzz about Google Talk, Skype should continue to be a strong player for several reasons. Among them is the developer community, which has reportedly created more than 400 applications since Skype opened its API last November. Skype recently held a competition for its developers, which was won by the Jyve Plugin. The Jyve plug-in adds Skype functionality to Web pages. Khaos Labs, Columbus CRM, Iskoot, Audiomatic and SalesForce.com were also cited. The growth of the Skype software community has been interesting because there are now dozens of companies generating revenue from Skype users. At the same time, Skype is working to get its own revenue and business model to the next level. In some cases, this pits Skype against its developer eco-system but Skype's future depends on its appeal to as many as users as possible, which means the more third-party apps the better. Skype's also got a new version of its software, which was released last week.
Speaking of applications, Andy Abramson has a good post on how it's the applications, not the price of minutes, that will drive VOIP. "The use of price will still attract some, but the real money will be made with the invention and deployment of the next voice mail, three way calling and call waiting types of apps hit the market," according to Andy.