"Does Skype matter?" is the question on the plate this morning. Jason Calacanis, A-list Webulebrity and better-search engine builder, believes no. In a comment left yesterday here on CenterNetworks he said, "Is the Skyp outage that big news? If it happens again, or becomes a trend maybe. But every service goes down at some point… not sure this is as major a news story for folks outside the 'techcrunch 100k.'"

I am not sure what a "techcrunch 100k" is, but if we assume that it's the readership of Techcrunch, I have to disagree. If you review the comments on our Skype Down post 24 hours ago (the first U.S. site to report on the outage), the majority of the 68 comments come from non-webtechies. It is interesting to note that while Jason doesn't believe it's big news, he was quick to create a "stub" page on Mahalo.

Now let's shift gears to a post on Techcrunch, authored by Duncan Riley. Duncan notes that eBay stock dropped $1 billion in market cap yesterday. The post seemed quite ambiguous as to whether Skype was the reason Duncan believes that the stock lost its value. I asked, "Just so I understand Duncan, are you suggesting that the $1 b market cap reduction was due to Skype down today?" Duncan promptly replied with, "the failure of eBay to bounce towards the end of the day when the NASDAQ did (the red line in the chart) would seem to indicate that yes: there is a link." Luckily Mike (Techcrunch Editor) responded shortly thereafter, "There’s no link at all between these as far as I can tell." While a continued Skype outage will affect the books, right now it's a public relations issue.

My answer to the initial question is: Yes, Skype matters. Companies bank on Skype to provide services which they pay for. I have a Skype-In and a Voicemail which I pay for so this outage hurts. Jason and Duncan sit on opposite sides which is a shock considering how much they are tied into the Internet. As the outage continues, other p2p/voip services must be loving it. And it's a wakeup call for those that rely 100% on the service. Have a backup plan just in case it's needed.

FYI, as of 7:30 Eastern, Skype is still down. New note on their blog as of 11:00 GMT.

Find more stories about: Quick News, Skype, Skype Down