A beta of the Skype client recently made available allows users to charge for voice and video calls placed to their account through a new service called Skype Prime. eBay-owned Skype has developed Skype Prime to grant users the ability to either charge by the minute or a single charge for the entire call. Fees would be taken out of the caller's Skype account, and the called party would receive 70 percent of the proceeds collected, payable through PayPal, another eBay-owned proprietary. This is very similar to Ether, a service I have written about, except Ether gives you a separate phone number. In the case of Skype Prime, you can simply use your Skype username or SkypeIn number.
Using Skype Prime you can be an online IT tech support dude (or dude-ette), online lawyer, consultant, or the seemier side - VoIP sex calls or even VoIP calls with XXX pornographic video. Wonder how long it will take some college girls to start using Skype Prime to offer their <cough> "services" from their dorm rooms to help pay for tuition. I guarantee some controversy will result from the ability for ANYONE to charge for Skype calls. Anyone can now start a phone sex business and make a buck simply by using Skype. Sex sells. Combine that will the ease of use of Skype, and I just foresee big trouble ahead - especially for teenage girls.
How long before some state requires Skype Prime to "verify" a user's age like some states are now demanding of Myspace in an attempt to protect minors from sexual predators?
Using Skype Prime you can be an online IT tech support dude (or dude-ette), online lawyer, consultant, or the seemier side - VoIP sex calls or even VoIP calls with XXX pornographic video. Wonder how long it will take some college girls to start using Skype Prime to offer their <cough> "services" from their dorm rooms to help pay for tuition. I guarantee some controversy will result from the ability for ANYONE to charge for Skype calls. Anyone can now start a phone sex business and make a buck simply by using Skype. Sex sells. Combine that will the ease of use of Skype, and I just foresee big trouble ahead - especially for teenage girls.
How long before some state requires Skype Prime to "verify" a user's age like some states are now demanding of Myspace in an attempt to protect minors from sexual predators?
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Again, another wonderful opportunity for the man on the street to come up with ingenious ways of makin money. I can forsee Skype Prime birthing a lot of online businesses.
Skype takes 30 percent of what you would earn!? That's a huge percentage. I guess they are trying to justify this by the fact that they have millions of users (6+ million online now according to my status bar on my Skype client right now) and their service, more or less, "just works".
It will be interesting if this takes off, although I'm sure we will see a huge delay if it does since it only works on their newest client software, and not even from landline phones (yet).
If this does take off, it will definitely open a whole new market on the web for entrepreneurs...
Adult industry transactions are not allowed through Paypal.
There are other platforms set up with age verification (using a credit card) and they take a 30% cut from the call.
To help skype prime users advertise themselves new service called http://www.primeskype.com/ was build. Now primeskype is a beta and provide only directory for skype prime users, but it will grow and will excellent web 2.0 service for online consultants.
Visit http://www.primeskype.com/