The beta version of Skype Prime, part of Skype 3.1 for Windows, a widget that allows Skype users to become online, on-call experts.

For example, if you’re a business consultant of some kind, you can set up a hotline for people to call you for advice and guidance in your area of expertise. Experts can charge per minute or per call.

Payment for the service is made through PayPal, of course, and Skype receives 30 percent commission.

"If you are a financial advisor or astrologer," says Sten Tamkivi, general manager of eCommerce for Skype, "a sports coach or a tutor and you want to sell your expertise online, Skype Prime opens up a whole new market by letting you sell your knowledge to Skype’s global community."

If the Skype Prime service sounds familiar, that’s because it’s not the first time we’ve seen something like it. Back in June of last year, Ingenio’s Scott Farber was just gushing about his new Ether product, a SkypeIn application birthing what Farber called "v-commerce," or voice commerce.

Ether customers could set their own rates for phone conversations, and Ether processed payments, collecting a 15 percent commission.

The next month, in July of 2006, Charles Carleton, co-founder of Jyve, told WebProNews all about his award-winning JyvePro, a Skype-based plug-in. Earlier that year, JyvePro won the Voice Services Award from…wait for it…Skype.

Jyve teamed up with Click&Buy to process online payments made by community users seeking expert, monetizable advice. Click&Buy’s commission rate: 15 percent.

Skype says its new Skype Prime product is still in the very early stages of its lifecycle and was "built from the ground up" just like Skype itself. And who are we to say it wasn’t? Perhaps they were just too slow about releasing it.

But you have to admit the timing’s fishy, and the 30 percent commission seems inordinately steep, considering two lesser-known competitors (without the leverage of 171 million users and all that eBay money) are offering a similar – really similar – service for half the price.

We can a lot from Microsoft.

Skype-Per-Minute Widget Launches

At the recent eBay Developers Conference, Skype bequeathed upon JyvePro the Voice Services Award. Jyve already operated an online Skype-powered community of experts, putting people in touch that had similar interests or business needs.

“The underlying premise,” said Jyve co-founder Charles Carleton, “is that at any given time, there are 6 million users online. We’re trying to match these people up and convert them to a pay system.”

That’s where Click&Buy comes in. Click&Buy provides the online payment system that allows these experts to charge for their time by the minute and enable the payment transfer. Click&Buy has developed a metered system that can be negotiated and implemented at the expert’s discretion.

Unlike Ether, which brokers the payment up front and connects interested parties via an assigned phone number that can be placed on websites or business cards, JyvePro also provides a searchable and taggable social networking community, which puts less onus on the intellectual service provider to aggressively market himself.

In future, says Carleton, Jyve will add interactive chat sessions where visitors preview a group of online experts, and click a button to talk to one of them one on one. It will also include video chat and the option to charge more per minute for that feature.

So Ether says it wants to keep its customer base more “high brow.” That means no phone sex or adult services. Has JyvePro set any such standards?

“Not yet, no,” said Carleton. “It hasn’t been an issue. If it starts then we may partner with another company to handle that traffic.”

Carleton said JyvePro’s commission was about the same as Ether’s, which is 15 percent of client revenue. Click&Buy can be used for micropayments or monthly subscriptions. The company makes use of SOAP and XML feeds to automate the billing process for the merchant. There is no charge for the SOAP service.

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