When online phone networking company Jajah enthusiastically announced their Jajah Buttons for eBay earlier this week, they didn’t anticipate eBay’s angry response.
Jajah Buttoned Up By eBay
We heard about the Jajah Buttons connection to eBay earlier in the week, when we received an email from them disclosing the new Buttons feature. Anyone, including eBay sellers, could embed a Jajah Button to enable easy click-to-call functionality on their auctions, websites, or blogs.
Jajah managed to pull this off in roughly the amount of time it took for the electrons to cool on eBay’s announced Skype writeoff at the beginning of the week. What Skype was meant to do for eBay’s sellers, Jajah accomplished in short order.
Rather than rewarding Jajah CEO Trevor Healy and company for their accomplishment, eBay had what we might think of as a hissy fit. Valleywag has the sad story of auctions containing Jajah Buttons:
In response to this affront, eBay last night deleted all auctions with Jajah buttons on them. Reportedly, eBay and Jajah had reached some sort of tentative agreement giving Jajah users the go-ahead to put Jajah buttons on their auctions — but that deal is now clearly dead.
Even with the fierce pushback from eBay, Jajah still came out looking good. They managed to do something Skype couldn’t seem to fulfill for eBay, and received some publicity in the process. Maybe after Meg Whitman and the eBay board have a cup of tea and settle down, they will give Jajah another chance at doing what billions of dollars worth of Skype didn’t.
