anybody remember webshots.com? They sold the company twice, coz they bought it back from excite when it went under.

Actually they sold it three times.

First to Excite@Home, then CNET, then American Greetings.

It was sold three times. AG bought it from CNET -- the founders had nothing to do with that.

Founders buying back companies for pennies on the dollar is surprisingly common. There's a 300-ish person consultancy in Cleveland with such a history . The founder cashed out twice.

Excite@Home also paid $780 million for Blue Mountain.com then sold it to American Greetings for $35 million.

Skype is a company that should go public.

Imagine Skype integrating a money transfer layer into its application.

I would also think it is one of the biggest social network platform that has yet to be milked.

Agreed. Personally, I'm surprised that no electronics manufacturer has built wifi and Skype into a video camera yet.

Its got mostly to do with their closed platform. However, recently they have started opening up things (i.e. their codecs). Skype has established a phenomenal brand image that is under-utilized right now because its still chained to the computer. Nonetheless, Developments like the iphone app are a breath of fresh air and shows their strategy of truly mobilizing the app.

Agree, they should tear down the walled garden, and implement a new version of skype interoperable with something such as xmpp/jingle.

I guess they said "Holy cow, we started a phone company with zero overheads and sold it for less than Verizon!"