BBC NEWS | Technology | Portal bid drives eBay Skype deal

I think the secret of the eBay / Skype deal is actually PayPal - as in rolling PayPal payments into Skype calls.

Imagine being able to bung anyone a tenner over a phone-call as easily as you could in the pub. A whole new world of ecommerce is made possible.

I ring up my mate and he asks if he can borrow 50 quid. If I have it, I say, sure and IM it to him. I can buy live services over the phone : legal or medical advice at 50p a minute, from anywhere in the world, offered by anybody : no infrastructure, or call-centre technology etc. You can haggle with eBay vendors.

It even opens up a kind of micro-payment for small content, with the twist of the return of the live shop-keeper. How do I make my content downloadable? Easy, I don't. I keep it on my desktop, and if anyone wants it, they skype me, chat for a minute or two, decide it's what they want, bung me 20 quid, and I pass the file to them.