eBay Names New Skype, Shopping.com CEOs

By Geoff Duncan February 25, 2008

Online auction leader eBay has appointed new CEO’s for its Skype and Shopping.com subsidiaries. Skype’s new CEO will be Josh Silverman, who’s currently CEO of Shopping.com, while eBay vet Andre Haddad will take over the reigns of Shopping.com.

“We’re honored and excited to welcome Josh to Skype as CEO. He has an outstanding track record of entrepreneurial leadership and managing diverse, fast-growing businesses,” said Ebay President and CEO-elect John Donahoe. “We look forward to working with him as Skype continues to innovate and build out its next stage of growth.”

Skype’s VoIP and video calling features essentially defined the VoIp marketplace, and the company posted $115 in revenue for the fourt quarter of 2007. Nonetheless, eBay has taken heat from investors for spending $4.1 billion on the company have in 2005, and the company has even admitted it overvalued the VoIP operator and has failued to deliver on promises of integrating VoIP technology into its other online brands. Skype continues to rack up new users, particularly in international markets—the total is now over 276 million registered accounts. One of Silverman’s key tasks will no doubt be turning those hundreds of millions of users into a larger revenue stream. Before joining eBay in 2003, Silverman co-founded and served as CEO of social planning site Evite.

Andre Haddad will be taking over for Silverman as the head of Shopping.com; he joined eBay in 2001 when the company acquired European online marketplace iBazar, and has most recently served as senior VP of product at eBay.

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Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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