eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and News Corp (NYSE:NWS) are teaming up to promote two of their most widely distributed products. The two companies have made a deal where "Skype has agreed to put Internet calls into MySpace's instant-messaging feature to gain more users and broaden the distribution of their two services," according to The Wall Street Journal.
MySpace has 110 million users and Skype has more than 220 million. The Journal says that starting in November, MySpace users will be able to call people through instant message. MySpace users will also be able to link to Skype's network and integrate features of their profile into Skype.
The trouble with the idea is that it is hard to see how anyone makes money. eBay wrote down its investment in Skype because the service has brought in so little money. MySpace has an ad sales deal with Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) that will bring in $900 million over several years, but it is not clear that marketers can capture social network users the way that they can visitors to AOL Finance. The social network crowd cannot be identified with one set of interests that makes it easy to figure out what products or services they want.
It is a classic case of a partnership where 1+1=0.
Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.
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