Skype Execs Keynote Derailed by Glitches

Peer-to-peer VOIP player Skype is aiming to become “an ecosystem where people around the world can be connected for free,” CEO Niklas Zennström said in a keynote speech at the Fall VON show in Boston last week.

At least thats what it sounded like.

Zennström, founder of the worlds most popular P2P voice-over-IP software company, had planned to give his speech over a satellite feed from his home country of Sweden using Skype software.

But it didnt work. Other speakers took the stage as show organizers tried to fix the problem. “The sound you hear is the sound of eBay stock going down,” quipped Blair Levin, an analyst at Legg Mason. eBay announced earlier this month that it was acquiring Skype for $2.6 billion.

Eventually, an hour late, Zennströms speech began. Some of the speech came across clearly—the sentiment that eBay will help Skype deliver its ecosystem vision, for example. But much of the feed was muffled. Zennström speaks beautiful English, but

in this case he came across sounding like the Swedish Chef from the Muppets.

According to this reporters notes:

“The industry warple watt,” Zennström said. “We need to take advantage of other warple warple. Fortunately, policymakers are putting things into perspective.”

“We are braining a fruit bowl,” Zennström seemingly added. “Furble.”